ellen bell

I listen to them talk on the phone as I make supper. He always has it on speaker phone. I prompt some of their conversation. Sometimes it is because I can sense he is running out of things to say to her, but other times it is because I am curious about her life. She has always been there but we’ve had little interaction of the years that I have known him. He asks about her first child, the one he never saw, the one who died of cystic fibrosis, I believe. The child’s remains are buried with his and her parents. And it was given the same name as his. Was that an act of fondness? She talked of going for walks with their father as a child. They walked to see another brother who was in a sanatorium with scarlet fever. I think my father had that as a child too. He was only two. She was four. Poor love. I had no idea. To be taken from your family at such a wee age. How did he make sense of it? And then he asked her how long her first born had lived. Six weeks, she said. They used to travel every other day to see him in hospital. They weren’t there when he died. We got a phone call, she said. It must’ve broken her heart. It still must.

I am curious about the way other people live their lives, particularly those who are close by. There’s nothing prurient in my interest, merely a wish to find a common ground, to notice and feel compassion. Take Smoker (2) for instance. As I have said before we can see his bedroom window from the front windows of our flat. We look down on him so to speak. I haven’t seen his two young children arrive for some time now. They used to come almost every weekend. I’d see them running up the steps after being dropped off by their mother while Smoker (2) would linger behind with her for a word. The kids would rush into the block, clearly knowing their way and seemingly happy to be there. He’s been alone each morning this week. I’ve seen him sprawled or sitting on the edge of his unmade bed, a hoodie on in this cold weather, reading his phone. I attribute a sadness to him but I could be wrong. He may be content in his solitude, who knows.

The snow was unexpected. I was rushing to an appointment. He’d offered me a lift. No, no, I’d said. I want to walk. I watched the snow turn to rain from my studio window and braced myself. The walkway from our hallway out to the steps into the car park was slushy and slippy. And the small flight of steps even worse. I heard him first. He was using some sort of mechanical strimmer on a bush on the edge of the car park. We know him. We’ve seen him loads of time and we nod, though we don’t know his name. He is a slow, lumbering sort of chap, not old. An employee of the super-fit, brown-skinned, ever-friendly, quasi-Australian (he’s really from Cardiff) director of the landscape gardening company that our agents contract the keeping of the estate to, he doesn’t emulate his boss’s saviour-faire. He saw me struggling with the steps while balancing my stick and umbrella and came over. Offering me his arm, and then taking my hand he walked me down the hill. I was so touched while at the same time thinking he must think of me as an old woman. A gentle being, clearly. The kindness of strangers…..

It was a painless visit. That is it was relatively quick and smooth. The nurses are so gentle and kind, and the surgeons, though a little aloof and distracted, are solicitous when you are before them. Well, I am the list. It may take a year the surgeon said unless the X-ray shows a collapse. I asked him what he meant though his explanation didn’t really make it any clearer. It’s just a phrase that they use, he said as we walked him, like heart failure. Waiting for the X-ray the technician put me in a tiny cupboard like ante-room with a blue concertinaed curtain. I sat and listened to him talking to the farmer’s wife from Aberaeron. Lambing started and her real name is Nanci. I wasn’t having that, she said. The girl doing the X-ray spent ages feeling my bones. What are you looking for? I wanted to ask. Previously a woman had tried to verbally spell out her name – Micklewright – for her. In the end she had to write it out. She was kind about it, thankfully. A&E was empty. No war zone today.

Is sleet preferable to rain? I wasn’t sure at 4.00 am this morning as I readied myself to go out. Is it less wet, perhaps? Whatever the answer, I went prepared. I put on three coats, two hats, one scarf, two pairs of gloves and two pairs of waterproof trousers, oh and my waterproof gaiters over my boots. I must’ve looked utterly ridiculous. Do I care? Do I poppycock. There were two men unloading a delivery lorry outside Holland & Barrett when I came down Great Darkgate Street. One – the one who called out Good Morning to me in a cheery, not a typical 4.00 am voice – was wearing shorts and a thin kagoule, as a nod to the weather I suppose. It was nice to hear his tones. God, it is bleak. Winter is a challenge. And now, I must write. The heating is off, naturally. I’m in the studio with two hot water bottles, a blanket, two jumpers on and the little fire going (which I will soon turn off, well when I’ve opened my flask of tea). Then its the hospital…

He’d insisted that if there was ice I was to come straight home. I promised I would. But there wasn’t. In fact it was a good winter’s morning – cold but still. I walked stiffly, as if my legs were iron. And it wasn’t long before I lost all feeling (other than a kind of stinging numbness) in all my extremities. I remember the pain of cold hands as a child. And it was pain. A sensation that was sometimes made worse by going into a warm environment. Is this was frost-bite feels like? I thought as I walked. The rest of me was as warm as toast, it was just my hands and feet. No one was about, except a tall, rangy student who loped past me, no gloves on his hands. I didn’t check to see if the rough sleeper was still in the Prom’s shelter. He can’t be, surely not?

One written, one more to go. And I’ve no idea what I’m going to say.

I forgot to mention the fox yesterday. How could he have slipped my mind when he forged such an impression by his brief appearance last Saturday morning? I love seeing them. I’ve seen four. I remember each one. One was in our garden in Cambridge. It stood by the kitchen door holding my stare for what seemed like hours (it wasn’t) before turning tail and bounding over our fence. The other was years before in Manchester. It was another early morning and it was crossing a busy, though then empty thoroughfare. Then there was the one I saw on the Prom. He too held my stare. I could see his body move with his breath. And now this one. It crossed the path of our car just after the new Dovey bridge roadworks. He was a flash of fur, a pointed nose, sharp-ended ears and then a brush tail escaping into the scrub. Seen and then gone. Marvellous. Life is made anew by such wildness. I thought about how he saw the world, the smells he caught, the sensations of being out there scavenger, trying to survive. How I love them.

He puts his head round the studio door to say, “Look it’s only eight o’clock and dawn is coming.” One of the woefully small hyacinths in the window box outside our front door is beginning to open and I saw a woman carrying some freshly cut daffodils into the gallery yesterday. And the buds on the magnolia trees are beginning to show. Do I need more evidence? Can I not be heartened by it? I shall try. I promise.

A rich day yesterday. My soul was fed.

I went on my walk this morning all prepared to listen to music. I had my headphones on all ready. And then I forgot. I was outside before I remembered and by then both coats had been zipped up tight and there was no way I was going to unzip them and then remove my gloves to find where my iPad rested in that inner pocket. So I walked in silence. Well, it wasn’t strictly silent. How could it be? This is an urban space. I listened as I walked. I heard birdsong. A blackbird and then a robin, perhaps. I heard an occasional car and a low continuous hum. What was that? Generators? Electricity cables? Drains? I don’t mind it. And besides the countryside as we know it here in the UK is certainly never really quiet – there are birds there too, and foxes barking and maybe even the grunt of badgers. I like being part of the noise with my footsteps, the click of my stick and the swoosh of my waterproofs. Its a vocalising of animation, of life. And I’m glad that I can still participate in it.

I dreamt of messages and of phone calls I had to make and receive. One was from Aberdeenshire, I think. I couldn’t work my mobile, it’s screen was full of arcane images. But there was a sense of optimism, of hope for for all the chaos of misunderstandings, there were opportunities coming. I knew this even when I woke.

She’s an odd mix of scatological boldness and maidenly prudery. She needs constant attention like a child. If she’s not being asked questions or being listened to she looks away either staring out of the window or around the coffee shop, or she’ll resort to reading her phone. To get that attention she has various ruses from bringing in her Jack Russell pup to listing her aches and pains. Over the last few days it moved swiftly from being all about her hip to a kidney infection. As a result she turned up on Friday bra-less. “I can’t take my coat off,” she said to me in a conspiratorial whisper, “I’ve got no bra on. It hurts too much.” I encouraged her to take the risk and take it off. She did, blushing a bit. This is from the woman who calls her erstwhile fiancé all numbers of names…. Funny.