I wanted to stay with him. I wanted the warmth of him. The thought of the other bed made me feel cold, chilled. But I went. The snoring was too much and my need for uninterrupted sleep paramount. I went and folded over the duvet in two. I slept.
It is always discombobulating for me. I feel adrift. Which of course, I am. I wake in a strange bed, too early, and when the rest of the house is fast asleep. There is no helping it. My body is used to waking in the wee hours. Outside it is pitch. I can hear the rain, heavy. P. snores next to me. I’ve been to the loo, done some yoga, drawn and read. I long to make tea, eat and shower. But not yet. Not yet.
The damp stain on my bedroom ceiling has got worse. I only noticed its creeping yesterday. It unsettles me. It is the boiler, most probably. And then the torrential rain woke me. Water, water all around.
He was always a tender being. Or at least, that is how I’ve always seen him. Masked, he hides his tenderness. A boy-man. A treasured child. Things are broken for him, it seems. He is loved. That must help. But will he talk, will he unburden the burden he carries. Those sins of the forefathers. He is clean of it. I try to reach him. A little. He doesn’t want it. He closes off. I understand. I tread more carefully these days. Respecting another’s privacy and need to grieve. Is that it? Is is grief? Hold him. Please.
I’m a stealer of words. Or perhaps I should say an appropriator, a borrower of them. I read this word this morning. Sara Maitland used it after quoting someone else who used it. Urgencies. The urgencies of life that eat into a deep desire (that I always rediscover in myself after rereading and reading again Maitland’s book). I’ve spent the weekend attending to such urgencies. It is small stuff, irritating stuff that if left fills my head leaving no room for the soaring things. I am better for dealing with them. But there is yet more. Heigh ho. Onward.
It takes time. I wonder if most people feel the same. I’m stirred-up by travelling, adrift, lost almost. And coming home isn’t easy either. Putting everything back in place, and that smell about the place that I can never identify. I am just as lost (and irritable). The next day and then the next grow better. I clean the house. I wash the clothes. I cook. I walk. I try to refind myself in this space, this life. And then long to be away again.
I went seeking some sun. Just a little. And on my face. I went to the little park that was once a maze. The man who is always there, lying flat out on a bench sun-bathing, was there, as were two women, smoking and talking. I sat down on the bench just before theirs. I shut my eyes. I wanted to listen, not to them, necessarily but to all the sounds around me. I heard the metallic click of one of the women’s Zippo lighter. I smelt the acrid stink of cigarette. Somewhere, in one of the gardens along North Road, someone was trying to start up a petrol-fired lawn mower. I heard the chock of a tennis ball. A man was coming towards me down the path. He walked self-consciously with small, tentative steps. I heard the chirrup of small birds. Where they blue tits or sparrows? A heard the song of blackbird. I heard car engines, tyres on tarmac and gulls. No silence. But it was restful. And the sun, though filmy, did warm my skin.
I often re-read books. And this re-reading usually comes from a need to revisit the place to which they take me, be it an actual or a mental space. I’ve read Sara Maitland’s Book of Silence many times. I need it now, I find. I covet her contentment (though she questions that that is what she seeks, stating it as something more akin to the sublime), her silence, her solitude and time for contemplation. Will my time come? Will I allow it to be so? I hope so, sincerely.
It was the first time we’d gathered together, albeit virutally, since June (or was it July). I was nervous. I’d lost my fluency, if I’d ever had it. I was tongue-tied and hoping that we wouldn’t have to do another introduction round. We didn’t. I asked a few questions, or at least made some comments and felt such a fool doing so. I didn’t make myself clear and came across as woolly and incoherent. Sara Maitland writes about having a thin sense of self when she is among other people, and how she tends feel overwhelmed, or even subsumed by them. I know that feeling. My confidence is so brittle and I am too much in awe of what I see as others’ brilliance. I cried afterwards. I felt flayed by it all.
I overslept this morning. The alarm had woken me in the middle of a dream in which I was trying to remember how to make meringues. For some reason I’d offered to make toast for Keir Starmer. And he’d asked for something sweet to be put on top of the slice. Meringues? I’d suggested. Yes, he’d said. I woke realising that I wasn’t completely sure how to prepare them. Then I’d gone back to sleep and the dream had continued. We’d become lovers. At least, I had taken the unauthorised role of concubine. I serviced his stress and frustration. I helped him inside of me. It was quick and clean. Our relationship was warm, intimate and amiable. There was no mention of his family or his wife. His staff accepted me as part of his entourage. No questions were asked. I’d wake from our bed to see him working at his boxes. He’d enter me again. There was no passion on my side, no desire or want. But I didn’t seem to feel any rancour. At one point we were in a car being driven somewhere so that he could make a speech. It was a northern town. Outside the car there were cobbles on the street. He turned me around and clipped a necklace around my neck. I remember thinking it wasn’t something I would normally wear but I knew I would. It was something to do with Queen Elizabeth’s anniversary. It was silver, small and dainty. We held each other and I said that I didn’t want to hurt anyone. Back home. I was in the communal toilets, women were washing their hands in what looked like urinals. I need some milk, I said to one of them. Shall I get you some? she asked. No need, I said. Good, she said, for I wanted to go back to bed. There was a scum line of dirt around the sink-cum-urinal. She washed it away with her hand.