NIGHT 9
Night 9. Saturday 26 November
Well that really was a stinker. A total stinker and it took its toll.
Yesterday we awoke and, as is now the custom, checked the crowdfunder. £31,600. Sarah sends a link to the Stoke on Trent Sentinel. We spoke to MyLondon which must syndicate news. In the piece Dan is filmmaker. I am ‘wife.’ Dan is quoted. I am not. The comments range from ‘get a job’ to ‘attention seekers.’ What once might have been a punch on the face are now maybe nasty looks. If I ‘m not careful they do get to me but Dan warns me off that route. I am sometimes shocked by the narrow minded stupidity that shows it ugly face in the comments sections of the world. Sad that so many are so confined by fear and lack of imagination. Meanwhile an invitation comes in to a party where the dress code is ‘surreal and FABULOUS’. I look down at my layers of thermals and jogging bottoms and wonder if I can be fabulous. The tiredness is heavy.
A kind offer of posting us waterproof socks used for sketching in Iceland arrives. As Dan / Montegue H Withnail would (almost) say ‘Ah memories of Iceland’. It was a thrilling and formative trip for me in the second year of a Fine Art degree. I worked as a ‘scout’ / cleaner in Oxford University clearing up after the majority of the other students went home. Cleaning standards were high and University toilets and fridges were disgusting. I amassed jars of left behind coins and lived off the abandoned contents of moulding fridges. It was a double life. I needed different scouting skills for Iceland and it was only meeting an experienced trekker/young farmer that saved us from hypothermia as my friend and I were woefully unprepared. Some things don’t change. When I returned my work was transformed. I thank my sculpture tutor Brian Catling for that - for setting up a vital artist contact in Reykjavik who sheltered us in the warmth of an attic room and fed us food and folklore. He died last month. Or maybe it’s two months already. I hadn’t expected to feel so devastated. The tributes poured in. I had at least emailed to say how much I ‘d appreciated his support. He replied “Dear Hilary, how nice to hear from you and thank you for such meaningful words. Please keep me up to date with your work. I have always admired its originality and quiet determination. I am not sure which poem you mean. Memory becomes transparent when you write fiction. Please do tell. Love b.”
And I didn’t tell him in time but it was called ‘Come Closer, How do we remember light’ written on the death of his love……
“How do we remember beauty which has been so treacherously stolen?
When all those setting suns and rising moons cease and their brightness falters on this side of the glass where the reality is a reflection, now that the purest radiance has gone.
How do we reserve and cherish her uniqueness of talent ,inspiration and grace ?
We who are lost for words
We who can barely see
We who have never dared to look so deep or joyously drawn the life of a cloud,
must now brave our eyes. Staunch the tears because they make our sight of her unfocused and that would be wrong and a waste of the clarity that she so gifted.
That she demanded of us.
Both in her summoning of spiritual transcendence, smouldering in her art and in the day to day fortitude of her faith
and in the glory of her presence
come closer
and see a smile that will last forever
This is how we will remember light”
And I remember him.
The forecast is not good for tonight. Light is a memory. The clouds are alive. I go up and secure the bed. Strapping down the tarpaulin. Taking off the lampshade. A car alarm is going off almost non-stop on our street. The intermittent breaks make it worse. The sigh of relief met with a new relentless high-pitched sound. A headache arrives. I ‘m unsure how to play it tonight with the rain and wind setting in. I’m worried about the wind speed and the tarpaulin and whether to retire now to add weight to the bed and ride the worst of it. This is a low point. The crowdfunder is creaking slowly up, £32,500. Gina says ‘text me if you need a lullaby.’ I do.
Today is the first day I ‘ve dreaded climbing the ladder. I plod up it if plodding is possible when climbing. Dan finds me trying to sleep under the bed. It could work but he persuades me on top of it confident that our substantial weight will hold it down but aware we can’t put the plastic up in the way we had been. We hunker down. It is not pleasant. The sky has been displaying a warning yellow. The weather ap shows dark grey clouds but in reality they glow ominously. The wind is strong. I try to fall asleep holding onto the plastic to keep it in position - jaw clenched, shoulders stiff. This is not relaxing. I can’t believe it when I hear snoring from Dan’s side. But the next moment he is waking with claustrophobia and panic from the plastic enveloping his face. The hours pass slowly with moments of sleep interspersed with staring out blankly watching raindrops hit tarpaulin. I stagger down the ladder at 7am. Everything is going to pot. It’s not like one of us has gone off to some extreme place to do something extreme in the knowledge that all is cared for on the home front. Being one minute in survival mode and the next in a zoom meeting or hoovering and putting the washing out is the strain. The lurcher collie cross is frustrated - she doesn’t know where we all are from one minute to the next. Our bed is full so I drag a duvet to the sofa and fall back asleep awaking in a panic that I ‘m late to run a workshop in Cambridge then realising that it was a dream. My whole body aches but when I go upstairs I see G has just finished a bath. I pop in and he offers me his Lego to play with. Suddenly things look up. Sleep is amazing. Hot water is amazing. The crowdfunder is going up and pledges are coming in – something must have happened , somewhere - it’s at £38,716. 77% of the way there. The weather forecast is drizzly but the wind is subsiding meaning last night might now be a memory and not a repetition and we can put back the three precious strings that make a plastic sheet into a tent and make sleep possible.
