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INSPIRED/ARNCLIFFE OCTOBER 2020

26/10/2020

[The following was completed as leisurely speculations about last days suddenly acquired a chilling new significance. A day or two later, a link to a Ted talk titled ‘What really matters at the end of life’ dropped into my inbox. I believe there is room – in fact a more or less urgent need - for conversation and speculation on such topics – but the events of a couple of weeks ago are a disturbing reminder that some things are beyond our control.]

Once my treatment is over, she said, I shall live each day as my last.

Not ‘as if’ but ‘as’: there’s a difference in emphasis I can’t quite put my finger on – something about actually doing it rather than pretending, perhaps?

It’s not an original thought, I know, but it’s set me thinking – about what our last days might look like, at best but also at the worst; how terrible it might be to be caught up in vengeful wrangling or bitter recriminations or in replaying old slights or newer sufferings and suddenly to find that this was how life would end for you. Or even if death took you unaware of how your final moments had been spent – I feel sure that dying with your focus on spite or sorrow will colour the process. It’s a bit like the old warning ‘Be careful the wind doesn’t change’ when your face is set in a grim expression for fear it might stick like that: to die with bad feelings uppermost will surely, somehow, make for a bad death. Not much better would be an indifferent ending – merely a fizzling out or Eliot’s famous ‘whimper’ – after a day frittered away. Not that I’m advocating anything so easy as looking on the bright side. Nor am I suggesting we follow the advice of another friend who recommends not allowing yourself to get up in a morning before you have managed at least one smile. Rather, I am interested in the choices I might make if I knew that this day would be my last, but without forewarning; that is, without the chance to tick off the item at the top of my bucket list, with no possibility of arranging to visit a favourite place or a longed-for destination, or to meet that special person one last time.

Something I heard somewhere recently – the source escapes me now but it has cropped up in conversations since – was the idea that we might take care to notice – one thing, anything, but really notice it, rather than going about our day with our heads down, just getting on with whatever we’re doing, with only the most superficial attention on what's around us. I’m reminded of a project initiated by Francesca in Buenos Aires: that each day we would walk just one block observing – in particular looking up at the upper floors of the buildings, often more elaborate or curious or enchanting than their ground level would lead you to assume. So yesterday, walking along the river, I saw how the clouds were stacked pale behind the spire of the church at the far side of the Common (after 12 years living in Cambridge, I had to check the name of the church (All Saints) when I arrived home). And I saw how sunlight alters everything. And listened to the birdsong behind the magpies’ chatter, ubiquitous now.

The pleasures and benefits of being outside have become highlighted during lockdown and this would be something I would add to my ‘last day’ list: whatever the weather, to spend at least a few moments outside. And, separately or not, exercise – not to let a day go by without some physical activity. Also I’m adding dancing to my list: not tango, probably, but for at least one song to get in touch with how my body might respond to music – something I’ve neglected for years, to the point where I’m actually unable to get to my feet and dance in any social gathering. That’s a loss I can recoup.

What else? Writing, of course; too often recently I’ve avoided the moment where I sit down with a blank page in front of me, blaming the fact that I have nothing to write. There is always something; even one sentence

To contact another human being should also be there: too many opportunities wasted, too often ready to crawl into my shell and leave it to others to contact me.

And finally – is it? – to do one small selfless thing each day that will benefit someone else – either small scale or for the ‘greater good’. That last sounds horribly self-righteous! And I’m wondering if there could be two separate impulses here: one personal, the other on the macro level..?

Saturday: not sure that I’ve hit either target in the last paragraph today but saw the blaze of virginia creeper on the Ferry Path bridge this morning and squeezed in an eleventh hour (literally) stumble around to Nina ‘Feeling Good’. And this I guess is/are my sentence or two: in sum, I’m inspired to be fully in the present; to inhabit the moment; to squeeze every ounce of nourishment from the day…

Bed. Yorkshire tomorrow.

SUNDAY

The way stone walls follow the curve of the land, the tree line, the valley bottom, divide field from field - the way beads of sheep’s wool are strung along a low fence wire - the way the cottage is hidden from the Darnbrook road behind trees - the way the trees are edging into autumn with an occasional one ahead of the crowd already a fire - the way after a certain time the noisy crows fall silent - the way the road drops dizzyingly down - after we left the motorway, the way one field after another was lit up emerald - the way the usually quiet roads were crowded with cars and walkers, even in the village - the way after sundown quiet was restored! - the way my feet stuck to the surface of the road, the way my breath stuck in my lungs, too long unused - the way turning and heading downhill was something of a relief! - the way I’ve mourned the loss of my ability to write as if it was for ever - the way the words spill across the page...

Fall No. 1: backwards into a ditch at the roadside - no damage.

MONDAY

...the way fields sweep down into the valley - the way in Wharfedale the valley bottom opens flat and wide, clumps of trees clustered along the slopes on the opposite side of the river - the way the trees are beginning to revel in colour, one or two massive chestnuts and sycamores ablaze with shades of orange and burnt umber, gold and magenta - the way the trees! - the way the larches by the river at Hawkswick lift up their skirts insolently, provocative, beginning the turn to ochre - the way the skeleton of a tree cavorts crazily, all limbs and angles - the way woodsmoke winds into the evening with the memory of a Burgundy November - the way the dipper appears suddenly and splashes and dips and swims before as suddenly flying off, skimming the surface of the water - the way the morning is constant drizzle, cloud hanging low between the hills - the way the garden birds vie for priority; so far the nuthatch is in charge...

TUESDAY

… the way the cloud sits on the hills as we drive into Wensleydale, rolling in around us, shrinking visibility to almost nothing - the way the cashier in the Spar launches into their Covid history, blaming Polish workers at the cheese factory for the earlier outbreak there - the way the rain sets in steadily as we take the track towards Nethergill Farm, passing the house where once we saw a man standing at the window - the way I can’t wait for the stove to be lit...

WEDNESDAY

...the way grass is combed thin across the rocks beneath - the way the cliffs across the valley are grooved like sabre-teeth or stalactites - the way the landscape is never still - the way two jackdaws sit in parallel on adjacent fence posts, and four ducks fly diagonally past, followed by another four, both in pairs - the way the call of crows is a rasp and the chorus of gulls as they rise and wheel above a far field is plaintive and shrill - the way pewter rain cloud drifts over the hill from Kettlewell and just hangs there, waiting - the way a swatch of pale blue behind a higher bank of sunlit clouds remains above the hills to the south - the way the steep slopes this side of the valley are ghosted with the pale outlines of what I think are dead or dying ash, their bare branches silver-grey against the green - the way there seem to be several stands of newly-planted saplings amongst the skeletal forms - the way the mossy walls glow emerald darkening to green-black with odd patches of faded crimson and occasional spots of deep vivid pink - the way there are sudden patches of paler green where tiny ferns grow out of the lichen - the way hips dot the roadside scarlet - the way the first larches of Hawkswick come into view - the way heading back towards Arncliffe the church tower is visible amongst the trees - the way the sky ahead clears into a hard blue - the way the sun, warm on my face, glistens through still-wet leaves - the way, whilst I have been out, our log basket has been replenished…

THURSDAY

.. the way the grey stone walls are every shade of grey, lightening to white patches of lichen and also sand and russet - the way the white horse in the blue coat twitches his ears for the camera - the way the lives of the lead miners of Grassington remind me of the gold prospectors in The Luminaries: hard lives - the way Grass Wood spreads, a rich mix, either side of the Conistone road, dropping steeply down to the river - the way the evening light! - the way a lone magpie flies like an arrow across the full length of a field - the way a small owl stands transfixed in the headlights, crouching over roadkill, before turning and flying off...

FRIDAY

...the way the world can turn on a sixpence - the way in the blink of an eye everything has changed.

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DIGGING

26/10/2020

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Leaving the motorway we stop twice, searching with scant success for evidence of C’s ancestors and move on, skirting the southern edge of the city, inching crabwise towards our destination. Memory flaps between recognition and strangeness like a sheet on a line - that curve in the road displaced by new build, the expected turning further than I remember. C talks, picking over the bones of an old love. I am half listening, half present, the rest of me taut with apprehension, anticipation. Red brick, weathered to crumbling, glows in the afternoon sun. Take care, I want to say, this is a dangerous bend but there's no need. And then there is the village sign, the dip in the road, the farm on the left.

We park round the corner at the lane end and walk up to the house. I feel the need to defend it from C’s unspoken criticism although it had no part in my growing up and I had no love for its bricks and mortar, not even for the garden, when I came to it as an adult. A moment is all it needs. We turn back and head between high hedges up the lane to the church. I wonder how many hundreds of times I‘ve walked this stretch of road, escaping the confines of what had become the family home, lighting the first cigarette once out of sight At a gap in the hedge we stop and look back at the house. What was a small acer has become a crimson fire. I point out the lone oak in the field. I used to look out at the tree from my bedroom window, I say, remembering as I speak that my room had no view over the back garden.

It’s a stiff pull up the path to the small church which squats square and defiant on its hilltop, the entrance opposite the vast split trunk of a yew. I wonder which has been here longer, church or tree? All Saints dates back at least to the eleventh century and what survives is now a listed building. I think of other feet making the same short climb over the centuries and of our own traffic through the years: weddings and funerals, Christmas and New Year celebrations and the day-to-day routines of a church-going family. My head fills with photographs of our own special occasions, many of those pictured long gone. Today, though, the church is not my business; I walk past and follow the trodden earth along the side of the graveyard almost to the end where the land falls away into the valley: the best view in the county, I’ve always said, if only they could see it.

The stone looks good, no sign of weathering. I’m surprised by the jolt of emotion when I read the last line of the inscription, long forgotten, ‘Together as in Life’. I’m unsure who was responsible for the sentiment, a tender evocation of a unity that wasn’t always evident. I’m reminded of the couple in Larkin’s ‘Arundel Tomb’, their effigies hand in hand, a perhaps misleading emblem of enduring love. Our father lived much of his life outside the home, absorbed in his railway career and, when that came to an end, in affairs of the church. Late in life my mother often told the story of Dad’s marriage proposal, sending her away to ‘think it over very carefully’ since he required a wife prepared to support him in his chosen profession, ready to move house at short notice when the opportunity for promotion arose. I imagine that Mum saw the marriage as a passport to advancement, an opportunity to exchange the poverty of her northern childhood for a better standard of living. In fact, there followed long years of privation, Mum stuck at home, often in a house she hated, nursing her invalid mother and with two small children to look after, the eldest growing into an increasingly difficult daughter.

The fiction is that our parents are buried side by side. In reality our mum, being the last to die, is on top. It’s more than four years since her committal - I believe that's the correct term - and the neglect shows. But I have come prepared. I take the trowel and shears, the plant, a pot and compost from the bag and crouch down at the graveside. It’s hard work and slow: the new shears are spring-loaded and I’m finding my upper arms too weak to snip away at the overgrowth for long. The area nearest the headstone is choked with couch grass and groundsel. I settle into a rhythm, alternating between yanking at the weeds and trimming the surface of the plot. Soon I give up my attempt to stay reasonably clean and kneel on the damp earth. I have no memory of Mum on her hands and knees scrubbing floors but I’m pretty sure it would have gone with the territory of the housewife, especially in the early days. Well into widowhood, ‘and I do all my own housework’ was still her proud boast. What would she make of me now, always scornful of her tidy habits and a grudging helper in house or garden, taking up such a lowly position with a good grace? We fought almost constantly as I turned from a surly and ‘contrary' child into a secretive, arrogant adolescent, tearful and truculent by turns, beset by passions, nursing the burden of my misunderstood state like a precious child of my own. My mother was out of her depth, prone to fits of temper punctuated by attempts to pacify. We prowled our territories in mutual mistrust although I recall the occasional truce: the post-Watchnight service party where we giggled at the host’s evident tipsiness or the day we struggled up the lane, clinging to each other in hedge-high snow. In her last months as dementia took hold we found an easier way of being together. Now, kneeling at her side, I feel as if I’m performing a service. In an unbidden echo of the childhood religiosity that I’ve been unable to shake off entirely, I’m reminded of the sister (Mary? or Martha?) who, rather than helping with the chores, sat at the feet of Jesus listening to his words and worshipfully anointed his feet with the entire contents of an expensive vial of perfume, Growing up, I might have wished for such an extravagant and affirmative show of love but Mum, ever practical, would have been on the side of the doers. I suspect she might have enjoyed this odd role reversal.

She would have appreciated this afternoon, too: the warmth of the sun, the murmur of farm machinery, the gently rolling landscape softened by trees, the first hint of the autumn colours she prized. No fan of big open spaces or the wild, she was frightened of water. Hers was a quiet life. She had no real interest in music, was apt to dismiss my dad’s loud-volume listening as a ‘din’ although she liked Gilbert & Sullvan - as long as it was delivered by the D’Oyly Carte Company. Her ultimate punishment, one stage further than the quick slap on the upper arm or the back of a thigh, was the silent treatment. She could keep it up for days. And yet, and yet… as I push the trowel deeper, worrying at the impacted roots, I see I have barely broken the surface of who she was. I remember her determination, returning to school in her fifties for ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels, her jam-making and silver-smithing, the sense of humour she shared with a few close friends, the understated elegance she worked so hard to achieve. I don’t think she ever made her peace with her northern origins but I promise myself, on my next visit, to plant the low-growing rose ‘Lancashire’ and imagine the roots finding their way into her bones.

They will have further to travel - I’m not sure how much further - to reach my father’s remains but I like to believe they will make it eventually and will be welcome. Unlike our mother, Dad remained proud of his working class Wigan heritage, his self-published autobiography laboriously charting his climb from an engineering apprenticeship in Horwich to the heights of Chief Mechanical and Electrical engineer for the London Midland Region of British Rail. Using the headstone for support to pull myself to standing, I remember his catchphrase ‘finished with engines’ - we thought of incorporating it in the inscription but agreed in the end to reserve it for the order of service. I stretch out my stiff back and legs, staggering as I struggle to stay upright on the uneven ground. I look down into the valley, the last of the sun bathing fields and buildings in liquid gold. Glorious, Dad would say. I search for a way of matching his energy and remember instead a reflective moment, when three or four of us gathered in the tiny ringing chamber of the bell tower on the day of his burial. There was music - Elgar, possibly, and Strauss’s Four Last Songs. For a March birthday and an April death the first song, ‘Spring’, was particularly apposite. I find a recording on my phone and, upping the volume, balance it on top of the stone. As I fold myself back to kneeling, the soprano’s voice soars over the straggle of graves. Dad’s musical tastes became more catholic with the years and the full-blooded emotion of the Strauss is so characteristic of his final enthusiasms that it’s as if he’s with me, above ground. I begin to tackle the plant I’ve brought, a small spreading hebe which had seemed an ideal shape as a temporary stopgap. In fact it’s pot-bound, firmly wedged in its plastic case and extricating it takes what feel like hours of tugging and twisting until it sits on the grass in front of me, its root system a solid carapace. I make a feeble attempt at teasing out one or two strands and then give up, settling instead for sticking it in the new pot as it is and dribbling in a little compost wherever it will go.

The second song, ‘September’, matches the month if not the weather - no ‘cool rain’ seeping into the ground here - but as a lament for the last days of summer and for the end of life, its melancholy tone is perfect. This morning I’d watched as a distant tree released flurries of pale leaves, light as petals, shimmering in the sun. Their downward drift is echoed now in falling phrases in the music and the piece closes with what I think is a horn picking up the tender note of longing for rest. I was fortunate to be with both parents in their final moments and I’m still moved by the memory of our father hanging on until the morning after my birthday, when he came as close as he ever came to a declaration of love for me, his ‘darling daughter’. Ours was never a family - or perhaps a generation? - that spoke its love easily and even now the kids are the ones who trade hugs and ‘love yous’ naturally whilst my brother and I still dodge awkwardly round physical closeness. Now, remembering the room in the Infirmary where Andy and I watched and waited, there’s much to regret. In my teens I found my dad insufferable, in my twenties an embarrassment, his intensity overwhelming. He was an enthusiast - music, of course, and his beloved railways. He was also by nature a cataloguer, keeping meticulous records of his audio tapes and his slides, mainly railway-related. These would have been quite an archive, if only we’d thought to keep them rather than following Mum’s instinct to get rid of the lot. He came to travel late but embraced it, working for brief periods in India and New Zealand after he officially retired, and was a lifelong churchman. He was also keen on projects, master-minding a campaign for a new church roof and the refurbishment of the bells. I see myself in so many of his characteristics: his intensity, his passions, his strong will; less so his optimism. ‘Everything points to happiness’ he was given to saying when things were not going terribly well or, worse, ‘Couldn’t be better, really.’

I’m struggling now, wearied by the emotion of the afternoon and by the effort of my modest bit of gardening. Fortunately C comes to finish off the snipping and then leaves me on my own to wrestle for a few more minutes with the roots that go way down in the hole where the vase sits beneath the headstone. It’s no good, I can’t shift them, can’t get to the bottom of them, not even with the combined determination of both parents. Instead I clamber up the bumpy ground to the tap for a last drink for the hebe, trampling who knows who underfoot, a precarious few yards but amazingly I make it without falling and then I just listen to the last song, ‘Im Abendrot’. Sunset, I think, a perfect coincidence. In fact when I check at home later, it translates as ‘the evening glow’, surprising for what I always think of as a very matter-of-fact language. It’s beautiful, sonorous and slow, a fitting ending to the cycle and to my digging and there’s a section which reminds me of ‘The Lark Ascending’ (checking later I discover that there are two larks in the words). There’s just time for a final memory, a last regret: a conversation with my dad about the production of Top Girls I was part of in Hallbankgate Village Hall, for one night only. You should have told me about it, Dad said. I would love to have seen it. You wouldn’t, I said. It’s full of swearing. That wouldn’t have mattered, he said. I would have loved it. He was probably right.

Time to go. I replace the plastic vase at the head of the plot, pushing it down on top of the recalcitrant roots and arrange the flowers we bought from the bucket at the lane end in the village, a mixed bunch of cultivated blooms and wild flowers. I take a photograph and have a last look at the view. As I turn away, a surge of sobbing stops me on the path and I have to pause to catch my breath. I realise later that this is the first time I’ve cried - really cried - for either death.

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INSPIRED/ARNCLIFFE OCTOBER 2020

DIGGING

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