ellen bell

She told him (and me as listener-in) about the ducks that come to her door each day. He asked her their names. Daisy and Donald, she said. It sparked a memory. Was in it a comic? The nephew and neice of Donald Duck, was one called Daisy? It doesn’t matter. I like that she has this connection with something other, something outside. The names are chosen and shared. A belonging is established and reinforced. She is making a home, as best she can from the little that was left. Is she happy there? Perhaps as happy as any of us can be who have lost most of our autonomy. We are to go and see her tomorrow. I never know what she is thinking. She is as hard to read as her mother was. Their emotions are hidden, closed-off, at least to me. I have grown so fond of her. I don’t know if it is mutual. And it doesn’t matter. Not at all. I enjoy what I feel about her. It is a kind of love. But mostly respect.

I’d been outside, lying between our car and a neighbour’s, sheltering from the wind and trying to get some sun. I’d packed up my bag of books (a burden that seems to be perpetually with me these days), cushions and mat and was making my way back to the flat when I saw them. It was a chase. A dogfight in the sky. First the rook closely followed by a jay. The jay was evidently in pursuit. They landed, one by one on the roof ahead of me. The rook balanced itself on the guttering and appeared to feign reaching down to drink some water while hopping its body nearer to the rook on the opposite slope. The jay jutted its head forward. I’d never seen one still for such a time. I usually only catch glimpses of them. I waited. Watching. There was no sound between them but they knew what was coming next. The jay was up and then the rook. They swerved and darted. The jay once more the pursuer. And that flash of kingfisher blue…

I’m reading Simon Critchley’s Very Little….Almost Nothing. And loving it. That is, if one can love a book on philosopy. He sets up rather deastablising questions. I move into them. And I find that I am not unsettled but liberated. The nothingness, the meaninglessness. A challenge at first, then there is all that space left behind by so called meaning. There is none, he says, using Beckett as proof. Nothing but stuff and silence. It is enough. I like this.

It was a beautiful morning. We went out for a tea and coffee first thing. I walked, he drove. It was still cold but the sun was coming. Sitting on the Prom waiting for the cafe to open, I let the sun shine on my face. Upturned like a flower craving warmth and yellow, I closed my eyes to it. Good Morning, a few passersby called out, Good Morning. The sea was a lapping, a gentle rollling of water on shingle. A flat-lining sort of morning. Lovely. I thank God for it. Always.

So many of them look sick. They are not well. Their faces are puffy, their bodies carry weight in the wrong places. Things hurt. One has a face that’s as white as a bisque-head doll. Other’s have gone grey too soon, before their years. I saw another in the coffee shop the other day. She was on crutches. The radiotherapy has fractured her hip. Broken bodies taking in all that poison. Taking in all that poison to keep them alive. I didn’t save her. Or her. Or him. None of them.

A wild morning. Spring has abated, it seems. ‘Wrong John’ claims that it’s a moderate breeze. Wrong, John. Wrong. It buffeted me. Four robust girls, some in shorts, all coatless, were walking up from Northgate Terrace as I crossed the road up to North Road. The wind caught at their hair but didn’t diminish their laughter. What do they think of me, I thought, all kitted out like this with numerous coats, hats, gloves and scarves? But of course, they didn’t think of me. Why would they? We live in different universes. I am invisible to them. And to a certain extent I like it that way. I have more in common with the birds.

I’m nervous about opening up my emails. What will they say? More rewrites? A completely new draft. I want to do this project but the fear surrounding it is immense. Is it all inside my head? They are good women, I know this, but I feel at their mercy. It is all skewed. Fear of fear of fear….

He calls her every day. They speak and I interject while preparing supper. I like it. On a Sunday he gets her to read out the home’s entertainment itineray. She rattles the paper to give the appropriate sound effect and begins. Her voice has weakened with age, though it was never booming. She reads slowly and quietly. There is the ubiquitious Bingo, a quiz, massage and pampering, though this week there is also something called fruit platter making. Or should that be preparing. There is never any detail. We ask her what that is, she doesn’t know. She never does because she never does. She did, however, go to the axe-throwing. What? we ask. It’s happening again today. It’s quite good, she said. The axes are plastic and you hurl them at something resembling a dart board, apparently. They stick for a while, she says, then they fall off. I suppose it is a form of exercise, those it’s name is rather at odds with the genteel nature the home attempts to portray. Perhaps the residents get things of their chests with such hurling. Who knows?

It takes different forms, that is, it shows in my body in different ways. Sometimes it is in my back, others my neck. Always my gut. I’ve always been fearful. Nanny Clarke used to refer to me as a ‘worrier’. She was sensitive to it. The only adult who was. And I loved her for it. I have always worried, so why would now be any different, particularly when the stakes feel so high. Fear. Fear of being found wanting.

I always feel a sense of loss when a book is finished. As well as a slight slough of anti-climax. Is that it? Is there no more? I get a sense that the writer’s often feel the same. It’s a normalising process, like the walking out of a darkened film theatre in the afternoon sun, or rain. It’s over. I have walked out of the story. It no longer plays in my head.