ellen bell

I saw them on the trees as I walked in the early morning. Not here but far far away. I asked her about them later. They’re worms, she said, they’re worms that spin a kind of web.

Someone on the TV was talking about moths in piles of leaves. I don’t watch TV usually but in the gym they’re on all the time. He was encouraging us all to participate in some survey. There haven’t been many leaves up until now. This morning I waded through them. I love the dry rustling, even in the dark. Later I saw a moth on the black rubber footbridge that leads to our flat. It lay, wings outstretched, next to a leaf. It was the exact same colour.

They’re all leaving. First Ronaldo, then Melvyn whose gone to work for DHL and now Wellington. I’ll only come back, he said, if Shubert is still here. I was so upset, said Mohammed, when Melvyn went without telling me. Ten years he’s been with me, ten years. It is sad. Those changes. This changing. It won’t be the same. Wellington wants to bring his family here. It is difficult. The old order is changing. I understand that people have to move on, says Mohammed, offering him another After Eight, but to not tell me. That hurts. Small changes. Not on a global scale. People leave. People move on. Nothing stays the same. Is it the small changes that unsettle us the most?

A woman sweeps the leaves on the pavement. She has left her front door open. She wears an old-fashioned pinny and slippers with a roll of fake fur along the top. The wind keeps blowing the leaves back. She sweeps on regardless.

I put a splash of BRUT on my wrists and neck. It is a smell heavy with memory, though I don’t know why for I don’t know anyone who wore it. It is iconic. Still going. Still in the same green bottle. I use it to scent the hoover. I don’t mind smelling of it. It is a comfort. It brings something back. Something, I am not sure what.

I watched the film again. Her movements are jerky. I am assaulted by her prettiness, her perfect innocence. So long ago. And now she is gone. Long gone.

I couldn’t think who sang it. Princes. Princes they’ll adore you. Marry me, marry you. It was the Spin Doctors. Yes. That’s it.

Gusts of memory, Proust called them. Gusts of memory carried along by a warm stink of aftershave.

The moon was huge. A great yellow orb. No kidding, just like a cheese. A truckle cheese you see in the shops in Amsterdam. I walked out underneath it. Seeing it caught my breath. It’s reflection was caught in the upper window of one of those big houses on St David’s Road. It ran like molten gold. The woman on the radio said it would be pink.

Raymond Carver wrote that he didn’t have the time to invest in novel writing. He died young. Barely forty. He could write poems, short stories but a novel requires more. Yes.

Time. It went back. Lots of programmes on the radio about time. The clock in the kitchen adjusted itself. We weren’t sure. I was a little anxious. I didn’t know how to do it. And then in the morning it was done. I fixed the one in the car. Look, he said, and we watched as the hand whirred round anti-clockwise. Clever girl, he said, clever girl. It felt disconcerting to see it going the wrong way round.

The street lights don’t know the time. They came on an hour early the next day. They usually don’t light up until five. It wouldn’t have mattered. The moonlight was enough.

I only saw cats this morning. A black and then a tabby. The black one flumped down and began to lick inside its inner thigh. Oh, yes, and there was a girl. We caught each other’s eye as we passed in the street under the light. It was 4.15 am. She wore a white t-shirt under her open coat. Her mascara had smudged. She didn’t smile.

Are you sure you still want the calls? I asked her. Oh, yes, dear, she said, I look forward to them. That’s fine then, that’s alright then.

He shuts the car door and drops the newspaper on the floor. I had to go into SPAR, he said, Smith’s had run out and the guy at the till kept saying Ow’s it goin? You a’right? Over and over, Ow’s it goin? You a’right?

A dear friend emails me. Her father-in-law is dying. He’s barely got two weeks left. He’s gone yellow, she writes. Her husband, his son, has read the advice sheets. They tell you to touch them, she writes, but they haven’t touched each other in years. He tries to hold his hand, but is it very difficult. Yes, I know. And so little time to smooth it all out. To sort it all out. To say goodbye with love. With grace.

Lady Meyer in an article in The Times, talks about being estranged from her two sons for over ten years. It is so difficult to talk to them. I don’t know what to talk about, she says. No, I know. But there is love, she says. Yes, I know. There is. In the end that is all there is.

I wish you grace. Both of you.

They call it a thunderclap headache, she said.

I had to go up there five times yesterday. Five times. It was too much. The late one especially. And he looked so crestfallen at the end, his confidence punctured. So much so that at first I thought it might his wife that did it. But no, that would be ludicrous. A man in his position. But then, I thought perhaps it was another woman altogether. A lewd phrase followed by ‘I love you’ and a heart and a smiley face. Right across the window for all to see. Was she angry on his behalf? Maybe. I’d sensed some anger, some antagonism when she’d burst in. The men in suits staring, their banter temporarily ceased. I told him but no one else. He can keep a secret.

Five times and today I am knackered. I’ve tried to work. To write myself better. To write myself clean. Tiredness makes me ragged, even dirty. Unkempt. Nothing seems to come right. I write regardless. I am still forming. Forming my story. I’m moving forward, even if I had to return to it. Write the thousand words. Do as I say. The rain is heavy. The sky is a grey white, featureless. Rainy Saturdays. What are they good for? So many of them. He is sleeping off a cold. I don’t know how you managed without paracetamols, he says. His voice is thick, he speaks through his nose.

Aren’t your nails bright? I say to the waitress as she delivers the food to our table. They are a fluorescent yellow. I hate them, she says in a strong Liverpuddlian accent. The colour looked nice in the bottle. When I’m washing up I keep thinking they’re bits of sweetcorn. I hate them, she says. I’m getting rid of them this afternoon, thank god.

Three students in fancy dress walk past our car into town. Oh, God, he says, here we go. No doubt you’ll see them coming home in the morning. And I did. One was a tall male in a pink tutu and the other a girl in cat’s ears and whiskers, a tail dragging behind her. They were eating baguettes from the all night SPAR.

She looked tired, strained. The vein under her right eye was inflamed, blue. Sometimes we drive ourselves too hard. Five times in one day. Sometimes we just need to stop. And listen.

A man on the radio is reading from Vincent van Gogh’s letters. He taught himself to draw, to paint. His early work was poor, a woman is saying. He was so diligent, so determined. It took all his strength to keep going. No one wanted it, no one was interested, except Theo. No one believed in him. You need to feed the source. An artist date, Julia Cameron calls them. Do we all have something? Do we really all have something to offer? Sometimes the doing is enough. Doing without expectation of reward, acknowledgement or even completion. To be in the writing. To be in it.

I thought writing would be cleaner. That I wouldn’t feel, at times, so sullied by it. It isn’t true. It’s the same thing. It comes from the same source. You just have to work your way through it. Who makes us feel sullied? Whose voice is that?

I missed the ending. Did Lorna Doone die?

Are these yours? she is asking me, pointing at my coat, gloves and hat that I had left on the table when I went to the loo. Because, she continues, I’d left a book open on that chair. Yes, I did find one, I reply, but I thought it was just left behind. No, she says. Do you want to sit here? she asks, for I won’t be long. No, no, I say, picking up my coat and things, you must have it, please.

There is no doubt that she is disconcerting. I do understand his irritation, even if I don’t share it. She scuttles about, rarely being still for a moment. First the toilet, where she leaves behind puddles of water, and then this table and then the next. She never orders coffee, or indeed buys anything from the counter, she merely pours herself a glass of water from the jug and sits down. And there are all her bags. Three of them. Full to the brim with papers, tissues, books and scarves. One day I also saw her carrying a box.

Today she is dressed in fur-lined boots, an ankle-length cotton printed skirt, several jumpers and a parka. And there are two silk flowers Kirby-gripped to her hair.

She has just moved herself and her bags from the table I vacated for her. For Christ’s sake, he says. Look at her, look at her.

She is clearly disturbed. Her actions are obsessive. The other week she stood up to go and clear a table that someone had just left. She piled all the plates onto a tray and put it on the condiments shelf before returning to her seat.

She scribbles and scratches in her books. Sentence after sentence is underlined.

Look, he says, she’s nabbed someone else. I turn to look. She is talking to a young man on an adjacent table. I cannot hear what he has said but she is taking one of his chairs. Five minutes later she is packing up her bags again to leave. I watch from the window. The White Lion has not opened yet. Look, I say to him, they’ve not even got their A boards out yet. That’s odd, he says. What will she do? I ask. Who? he says. The lady with the bags, I reply, she usually goes into the White Lion after here.

I see her crossing the road. She hesitates in front of the locked door. Then strides off up the hill.

I suppose one could spend all day wandering from café to café not actually buying anything, I say to him. Yes, I suppose so, he replies. There’s no harm in it, I say. It’s company, isn’t it? She’s not doing anyone any harm. No, he says, she’s just bloody irritating.

I thought they knew. I thought mothers instinctively knew. That they knew what to do.

What is it, baba? she is saying to the crying infant. She’s already sniffed the nappy, no, it’s clean. Are you hungry, she asks, trying to encourage the bottle’s teat into the screaming mouth. Ah, baba, is it your teeth? Come here, she’s says lifting her from the pram into her arms. There, there. She turns the rigid little body and leans it against her chest, rubbing it’s back.That’s it, she says as the baby lets out a loud burp. You’re all smiles now, aren’t you? That’s it, sweet pea. That’s it, she says, sighing.

I belong. I belong to this family for this weekend. I am part of their chaos, their noise, their mess. And I love it. I love holding her. That little weighty bundle of tears and chuckles. She stares open-eyed at the world. Trusting it, trusting me, with her heaviness. I love holding her.

They have planted the municipal beds with wild flowers. Scabious, Michaelmas Daises, Love-in-the-Mist. Such haphazard, raggedy beauty. A cost-cutting exercise. They need less attending. I’m glad. Though they have their own fragility. The wind takes the petals. A confetti of white strewn across the rubber AstroTurf of the playground. Kiss it better, shouts the mother to the little boy who has just fallen from the climbing frame, scuffing his hands. Naughty climbing frame. Naughty climbing frame.

We always see her in her cab when we come out of the Indian on a Monday night. How’ye doin’, he asks her, and how are the children? The other day we met her coming out of Morrison’s. She was out of context. Hi, we said. How are you? She looked flushed, happier somehow. Got to rush, she said, I’ve left them at home. Have a lovely day the two of you. Bye. I didn’t realise she was so tall. Her legs, though long have thick calves that are mottled with the cold. He left her three years ago now, for another taxi driver.

Two mornings running now there have been bodies on the Perygyl. In the dark I hear them before I see them. The first morning they were huddled in a group at the end, with one of them, a girl sitting on the wooden floor staring at the stars. This morning there were two on a bench. Each stopped talking as I approached.

A poet has moved to the Shetlands. I was in rapture for the first year, she said.

Don Taylor’s series of plays God Revolution, have finished. I miss hearing them. They were so powerful. I didn’t want to listen at first. That’s not for me I thought. I was wrong. It was the same yesterday morning. A forensic anthropologist on Desert Island Discs. Too much gore, I thought. And it was but there was compassion too and a calm acceptance that I wasn’t expecting. She talked of Kosovo and finding the scraps of a Mickey Mouse T-shirt that helped identify a young boy who’d been blown up by a mortar. One cannot even begin to imagine but we need to hear, don’t we? Don’t we?

We went to the zoo. It was a chill morning. It’s a surreal place. They’re mostly rescue animals. The leopard was a pet, the keeper tells me. A pet? he says, Christ. The lions, she continues, are a gift from Bristol. What are their names? he asks. The male is called Troy and she’s called Wilma.

She wouldn’t go in the reptile house. I can’t, she says shuddering, I’m scared of snakes. I had no idea.

You smell lovely, she says to me later, giving me a hug. It’s been good, hasn’t it. This belonging. All of us, belonging. I shall miss you. And it won’t last, you know, this struggle. It will get better. I promise. I promise you.

Marina Warner talking on the radio about Grimm’s Fairy Tales. See Kiki Smith’s Daughter, she tells us. A little girl, the offspring of the union between the wolf and Red Riding Hood. A little girl with a hairy face dressed in a crimson cloak.

Snapshots. Details. A woman skittering out of the SPAR at 4.30 am wearing pink, six-inch platform shoes. Outside of the Library the volunteers are loading the visitors to the Day Centre below into the coach. See you soon, Stan, bach, one of them shouts to an old man in a wheelchair. He raises his hand in a feeble salute. Bach is the Welsh word for small. It is a term of endearment usually applied to children. There is a little lifting platform at the back of the coach that raises the passengers one by one into its interior. An elderly woman stands on it, her head held high. She is smiling with glee. All the volunteers wear yellow high vis jackets. The stars were a mass this morning.

He was at his window smoking when I got back home from my walk at 4.45am. Are you a bad sleeper? I asked him. Oh, no, I just sleep at odd hours, he said. I like him. There is a world of knowing behind his pale eyes. Enjoy your breakfast, he called after me, closing the window.

They come tonight. I can’t wait. Family. Little ones. Her offspring. We shall make sandcastles. I shall think of them driving over the mountains. In that dark.

We watched Sunset Boulevard. It wasn’t what I expected. It was sinister, a film noir. William Holden was urbane, taciturn. Gloria Swanson magnificently over-the-top. It has stayed with me, still resonating. There was a fantastic image from the inside of the pool looking up – innovative, marvellous. It’s a treat to see what comes next.

And I finished DeLillo’s White Noise. Marvellous writing. I loved the background noises – the radio, the TV adverts. And the ending with Wilder taking his little tricycle across the interstate. It is just life. Living with the fear of the ending. And then just accepting it as living. The price of living, I suppose. Written with such compassion. Even toward Mr Gray who defiles his wife. Thank you for bringing it to me. Thank you Library, what a gift you are.

The sun shines glorious. An unexpected pleasure. Soon we shall go to sit in Eddy. A bientot.

There are crows on the roof outside my studio. Two of them, preening their plumage in the morning sun. Then they are off, caught up like black plastic bags in a sudden gust. Before diving down, out of my sight.

Lemn Sissay on Desert Island Discs. I am ashamed. I didn’t want to hear him. He’d had something I’d wanted. I wanted to not like him. But I couldn’t help it. I was charmed. What a joy. That luscious Northern brogue. Lancashire. So open, so generous. Kirsty Young was captivated. So where we all. Marvellous.

I was up there early this morning. Opening for the new curate. Still the same theme, he said. Winning and losing. Is he eloquent? I cannot judge. He doesn’t walk up the hill any longer. He used to remind me of a tortoise. I don’t mean any offence. It was his bag. That big bag strapped to his back. And the hill making him walk slowly.Trudging slowly, tortoise-like up that slope. And all in black. Perhaps more like a turtle. He is a little withdrawn since being ordained. More serious perhaps. World-weary. Carrying the world in that bag.

When are you coming? she asks. Soon, I say, soon. Oh, that is good, she says. I think of you a lot, I say. I think upon you too, she says. There is little else to say. She sounds well. Her voice, on the phone, is alert and lively. She remembers me. That is enough. That is enough.

Ratatouille, moans Jazzer in The Archers, too many vegetables in one dish, it’s not natural.

Hardeep Singh Kohli was hosting a programme about high wire walking. It mostly featured a famous French man who walked a tightrope across the Niagara Falls. During the half-hour programme Singh Kohli is himself learning to tightrope walk. Circus hurts, says his trainer, you have to trust your feet.

Trust your feet. Keep going. Forward.

I am walking home from my 5 am stride. Outside Cartref, one of the University’s Halls on Terrace Road, I can see a bulky figure in dark glasses and grey tracksuit. As I approach he blocks the way, removes his glasses and shouts HALT. He leans into my face. HALT, he says again. Pardon, I say. Gender, he says. G-E-N-D-E-R, he repeats, annunciating every letter. I look him straight in the face, then patting his arm, wish him goodnight and stride on. I hear a door close behind me.

Trust you feet. Keep going.

There are two skull and cross bones flags flying from Aberystwyth’s Public Library. Why?

There’s Lanky McBurney, he says. Hey, Lanky, how’d it go? Chances, he shouts, chances. Who’s Lanky McBurney, I ask when we get into the restaurant. He went to school with me, he says, you know, we saw him the other day on the Prom. He was going on a blind date, said he was shitting himself.

What’s that? he asks. What? I say. That mark on the picture. Just like my father, he says. What is? I say. Pointing out marks. We used to call them his ‘spot days’.

There is a tiny slither of a moon this morning. A ghost of white.

His light is often on when I sneak out first thing. Before it is light. 4.30 am. A yellow light behind the white slats of his venetian blind. Pete the Beast he calls him. Why? I ask. Oh, it was his nickname at school, something to do with a jumper he wore. It was all hairy. And it just stuck. God knows what  he is up to that time of night, his mother says. He thinks he is playing online poker. He always loved gambling, he said. In the pub he’d be straight on the machines. In the afternoon he is often leaning out of his window, smoking. Been for a walk? he asks.

I wanted to give blood, my one good thing for the day, the week, the month even. But I wasn’t allowed, nor was he. Next time, they said. You’re welcome to stay for a cup of tea and a biscuit. There’s custard creams.

A young mother jumping to her death from a bridge taking her four day old baby with her. An escape from misery. They told a similar story in Call the Midwife. She is saved, talked down from the bridge. She wanted to clean her baby in the river, rid it of germs. She is put in a sanatorium and given EST. The ending is happy enough. Happy enough. Though something has been lost. We expect to be happy but sometimes we just are not. No one is to blame. Are they?

The mother of the real-life mother spoke with such dignity outside the court hearing. She wants to understand, to encourage funding so that we all understand. How can a time with such potential for happiness bring such misery?

Driving home we pass an animal feed warehouse. A large sign advertising sheep food reads: FIT, FAT, FINISHED.

Granny Heather from The Archers has had a fatal stroke. My grandfather had a stroke when I was eight or maybe nine. It left him paralysed in both legs and one arm. I remember everyone talking about a stroke. I couldn’t understand why a stroke, a caress could harm him. He had always been a reserved, taciturn man, now he couldn’t help himself from breaking wind. We’d visit him in hospital and I’d see the shame flicker across his eyes. My father would keep talking, trying to smother the sound. My sister would fidget with suppressed giggles. I just wanted to leave, to save him further humiliation. He lived for another fifteen years.

He comes into my studio. That dreadful woman was in there again, he says. You know that nice couple we spoke to the other day at the till in Morrison’s. No. Yes, you do, she was sweet, laughed a lot. No. Never mind. Anyway, he says, they were sitting in our usual seat when she accosted them. She’d asked if she could have one of the chairs and they’d answered her with a question. Big mistake, I thought, he said. She had them captive for twenty minutes, banging on. Shouting. In the end he had to put on his coat and get up to leave. Dreadful. She’s dreadful.

I dreamt I was to take a plane ride. The runway was grass, an open space in full sun. We all stood in a line, waiting, eyes trained to the sky. It is strange to wake to darkness from a dream in the sun.

I was walking up the steps from the Quad. A young man was helping a girl up the steps ahead of me. You go ahead, he said turning to me, we may be some time. The girl was wearing flip flops with both her big toes encased in big swathes of bandage. Oh, that looks sore, I said. Oh, she said, I’m OK the anesthetic is still working.

They allowed her to bring him his washing to the prison. She sewed different coloured threads into his socks. A code to tell him how the children were.

It was the Fresher’s Party last night. I remembered it this morning when I saw the massing of students descending Penglais Hill. They walked slowly. A messy huddle of t-shirted youngsters, mostly silent. It was 4.30 am. They were walking straight into town. I crossed the road, wading through the tide of them. Some were ahead of me on North Road. It changed the feel of my usual walk, having them there in front of me. There were more on the Prom. A chaotic, shambling collection of bodies, some barely conscious. The lights of the Pier Pressure nightclub were still ablaze. Litter dotted the pavement. Polystyrene burger containers, pizza  boxes, chips and cigarette stubs. The cast of my shadow along the seashore set the oystercatchers peeping. A boy was shouting, Everton, Everton. It was quiet again by the Castle and down to the harbour. A solitary car was parked by the Perygyl. It was empty. Later, walking down Great Darkgate Street, they were there again. En masse, they flooded out of the SPAR. I heard more shouting ahead of me. I looked up across the road to a third floor window. It was lit. Three lads were hanging out of it calling to someone further up the road from me. You fucking queer, one of them shouted, walk away. Walk away, he shouted, walk away. And then I saw him. A tall, scrawny young man in a sleeveless T-shirt and baseball cap. Just one of you come down, he shouted back, just one of you come down. He’s coming, someone shouted. You wait, he’s coming. I observed the young man before me. He looked lost, dejected, trying so hard to be brave. It is their rite of passage, all this. This bravado, this fighting. It is hard for them. I wanted to stay with him. Offer him support. But he didn’t see me. He was locked inside his head, finding his way. Defending himself, his what, his honour? No, that is too pompous. He was finding his way. He is finding his way. Is it right? I don’t know. How do I know?

The students take over the town at night. They scrap and fight like the seagulls, their shouting no different to the birds, indiscriminate screeching. They leave the same mess. The air changes. A frisson of anxiety. And yet, I am safe. They rarely notice me. They are locked into their world, their viewpoint. Finding their way.

In Morrisons yesterday for the weekend shop. Sandra is in the queue before us. Morning, both, she says. You not working today, I ask. Usually she is behind the till. No, she says, not today. Doing anything nice? Nothing special, she replies. It’s my neighbours birthday tomorrow, she says pointing to the box of Maltesers on the conveyor belt. Her shopping lies higgedly-piggedly on its rubber surface. There are boxes of iced ringed donuts decorated with hundreds of thousands, bags of crisps, a tub of butter and some chocolate. I’ve never seen her out of uniform, standing up. She is small in stature but wide of girth. She limps, carries a stick. The smell of her is pungent, a sickly acidy smell. I touch her arm. Have a nice weekend, I say. Oh, I’m back in tomorrow, she says. Cheers, both.

A little Asian boy is on the Prom beyond South Marine Terrace blowing bubbles through a little hoop. An elderly white woman looks on. I remember doing that, I say to him. I thought it was magic, I tell him. When I discovered that it was only like washing-up liquid I was so disappointed.

I hear a buzzing from the sky. It sounds like a hornet. Looking up I see a grasshopper-like thing. It has legs that remain suspended as it flies. What is it? Two girls are playing on scooters in the Quad. They also look up at the flying object. You stay here and keep track of it, one of them says to the other, and I’ll go and get Mummy so that she can tell us what it is.

Did you see the drone? he asked coming up the stairs. Oh, I said, is that what it is.

So that’s how it feels. There are people out there in the world who see them regularly and to them they mean death. Anonymous things, directed, manipulated remotely, facelessly. Death by remote control.  It is too easy. Isn’t it? I listen to Any Questions and some of them seem to talk so glibly. We’ll just bomb them and them and them. Then it will be alright. Will it? Aid workers, helpers from Medecin de Frontier killed by a strike. By Americans. It is madness. What are we doing? Have we lost the ability to talk, to face each other, eye to eye. To talk of peace. Is it just penis waving, one of the female contributors on Any Questions asks. Now hang on, another replies. Jeremy Corbyn says he wouldn’t press the button. His honesty is lauded by all. Clearly not Prime Minister material, one contributor says. Why not? Must governing mean killing? I wish him strength of purpose. He brings goodness in his wake. Liberality, fairness and a wish to be kind.

No to trident. Let us be another Sweden, or a Costa Rica where they spend the defence budget on education. And yet what do I know? What do I know? It seems that the older I get the less I do know. I couldn’t even protect that young boy from a potential fight. Is it in our make-up to fight? Must it be so? I seek peace. And yet, I believe it needs to come from the inside out. That willingness to be at peace, to accept oneself fully. I still fight with myself, that is my responsibility. Though now it is less and less. Thank god. Thank god. I shall wait then. Wait and see what it is I can do. About. It all. If anything. Meantime. I wait, watch and listen. Do you hear it? It’s coming. Be at peace, if you can, just be at peace. Be kind. Disarm. Disarm with love. They say that in our defenceless we are strong. Amen to that. Amen. Ah, men.