I wake at 11am from a nightmare in which I discover that the Hermit’s Cave is closing. It’s far too late for breakfast when I wake so I put four richmond veggie sausages into the oven. Usually, after my father’s favoured way to eat a sausage sandwich, I melt a little butter in a pan, let it go the colour of toffee, and press two slices of bread into it, then spread each slice with a little layer of marmalade. There’s marmalade here, but it’s unopened and I wouldn’t feel right opening it. There’s no ketchup and no onions, either, so I opt for mustard, which I find at the back of the fridge. The sandwich is good, a little dry maybe, filling though and the mustard’s got enough kick to act as a decongestant. I then make myself an excessive five drinks: tea, coffee, lemsip, orange juice, berocca.
Sausage sandwich
I keep thinking I don’t feel so bad, certainly not as bad as I’d braced myself to feel, but I suspect that’s largely to do with the fact that I am sleeping for over ten hours a night and I’ve confined myself to this four room flat and make only a few journeys between the kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom each day. I speak to a few friends who encourage me to rest—more than I think I ought to—once I test negative. I am not good at that, which is probably why they are issuing me with this caution, and even though I know how important it is, rest does not come easy to me. Two friends recently have referred to me as a ‘doer’ which is true, I suppose, and probably another way of saying restless: I am usually taking one course or another or training for a big swim or trying to complete the capital ring walk or lifting weights or inventing other projects for myself. I’m not often still and when I am it’s not often for very long. This I imagine is a result of an upbringing in a family and a culture that takes a fairly dim view of rest—that teaches people to feel guilty for needing to rest—as much as it is a product of my own fear, less potent than it used to be, of what I might find in stillness.
I prepare a crumble by peeling two pears, two green apples, and two plums. The pears and plums are a little overripe so in places cave in under my thumb, spill their juice onto the chopping board and leave my fingers sticky. I realise there’s no flour in and don’t have the wherewithal to think about what else to make so tip everything into a bowl and toss it all in some lemon juice and caster sugar and place it into the fridge. I eat a satsuma, get some juice on my new trousers, eat four dates cold from the fridge, and have another ice lolly. My throat doesn’t really hurt today, it’s just something to do. Some time later, K brings me a bag of flour and in a bowl I rub it together with caster sugar—I usually prefer a mix of brown sugars, but this is what I’ve got—butter, oats, a little cinnamon and ginger, salt. I use fairy liquid to wash the butter from my fingers and tip the cold fruit from the fridge into a small baking tin and spoon the crumble on top, compacting it slightly with the back of the spoon to make room for more. Bake it for 30 minutes. I get out the ingredients for peppers pasta, thinking I might make it now so I only have to heat it later, but I’m exhausted and decide to get in the bath instead.
Crumble
Sometimes I think I might be better at it if there were more spaces especially for rest. A few years ago, deep in my grief and deeply in need of rest I didn’t have time for, I encountered a space I thought might be perfect for it. Before my father lived in the care home, I learnt that he had been houseless for quite some time. I was furious when I found out, which was a way of eclipsing the worry I felt. Something had not been right for a while but he had been concealing it from me at the same time as I had been trying not to uncover it. Now, I began to understand where we were heading. I could not bear the thought of him being lonely just as I could not bear being solely responsible for his loneliness. I needed to situate him inside some kind of constellation. I began researching almshouses and found one for which he met the criteria.
I don’t claim to know much about them but as far as I can tell, almshouses were first established by christian religious orders in the UK at some point during the 10th century. Then they were known as hospitals, not in the sense of medicine but rather of hospitality, a word that implies a relationship between host and guest. They were founded and still exist to provide a place of residence, food, and rest for elderly people of modest means. The particular almshouse I’d found and for which I, after gathering his information, had applied on his behalf emailed me to invite my father to stay for two nights to see what he thought of the place and the people with whom he’d be in community if both he and the almshouse Master agreed he would make a suitable Brother. I called him to let him know and to ask whether and when he’d like to visit, called the almshouse to let them know when we’d like to come, and then went online to book a room above the pub in the centre of town, a short bus ride away from the almshouse.
When we arrived, my partner and I checked into our room above the pub. It was on the top floor and to get to it, there was a narrow, steep set of carpeted stairs. My father followed us up. He wanted to help us with our bags. I wanted to be outside the situation within which I had found myself. I think it was hot, I think it must have been the summer. Not long after we arrived, we made our way through the town to the almshouse on foot. The town centre was not unfamiliar to me; it reminded me of the town closest to where I grew up—an english and distinctly ecclesiastical place, too. Like most high streets in this country, this one had a boots, a WHSmiths, and a few chain pubs but like in Canterbury, these looked incongruous in their medieval carapaces. After ten minutes of walking, tall townhouses started to give way to houses that were wider, further apart from one another, and had around them gravel driveways and enough space to park more than one car. There were a lot of walls, I noticed, some flint and others red brick, dividing the houses from each other and from the pavement and the road.
As the hospital is set back a bit from the road and not particularly well signposted, I had been told to look out for two wooden bus stands on either side of the road and a pub called the Bell Inn. We found our way to the entrance and met with the master of the house in her office. I felt like I was a parent taking their son to boarding school. She talked us through my father’s visit. Told us that he could, like the brothers, come and go as he pleased and that he was welcome to eat with them on both days in the hall where a warm, two course midday meal is served each day. She described life there: that there was a barber who called in each month to cut the brothers’ hair, that brothers if they so wished could have a garden in which they could grow food or flowers, and that a subsidised taxi would take them to and from their weekly shop. After all this, she asked us to wait outside while she spoke to my father in private. We stepped out and I closed my eyes into the sun. The almshouses were made of stone and each one had an enormous chimney and next to the wooden doors of some of the lodgings wisteria inched up the walls. The buildings were organised around a square of mown grass which all the heavy, wooden doors to the flats faced in an embrace. I was so tired. This had all begun so soon after such a long and enormous ending, I’d barely had time to be crumpled by grief before I’d had to smooth myself out again. I wanted to be held in the way the almshouse was promising to hold my father. Everyone should get this, I remember saying to my partner.
Peppers Pasta
Cornelius Prior (they/them): I’m a writer and an editor in the cultural sector. I write about books, homosexuality, cities, and occasionally art and moving image.
Klaussie Williams (she/her): I’m an artist and bookseller. I make abstract water colours, book jacket illustrations, and draw the places and things I like.