Come Not When I Am Dead (10 page)

I
like an adventure.
 
Sometimes.
 
Joseph and I met on the far platform at
Exeter St David’s for our train at 9.58am to London Paddington.
 
It was sunny and the promise of heat,
but today I don’t mind.
 
I have on a
pretty pale pink 1960’s dress with a belt with two big pearl droplets on the
ends of it, it fits me like a glove.
 
I had bought two diet cokes in the on-platform cafe, one for each of us,
one said ‘Charlie’ the other said ‘handsome’.
 
I started off the day with a carefree
attitude and gave the ‘Charlie’ one to Joseph, who laughed.
 
Joseph knows about Charlie now, but he’s
the only one who does, well, the only one I’ve told.
 

Joseph
was wearing his stone coloured linen suit.
 
We looked like we belonged together, with our blonde hair and bone
structure.
 
That is important to me.
 
“Your eyes are bluer than mine though”
as I stare at them
“Your eyes are grey Aunty Gussie, I’d never noticed that before, that explains
it” he said.
 
We got in to our
carriage and found our seats.
 
We
sat opposite each other across the table.
 
I could smell India on the train.
 
It was like an Indian morning, early, sun shining strongly through the
clouds and we only get the feeling of strength, not heat.
 
That stuffy, suffocated, exciting smell
of an adventure, and that unutterable quietness and thoughts of things to
come.
 
Going on an adventure.
 
When we got to Bristol someone sat next
to me, no one sat next to Joseph although his seat was empty.
 
This man sat next to me even though the
seat was full of my bag and jacket.
 
We pulled faces at each other, we would be climbing the walls.
 
The man got out a laptop and started
working.
 
I looked furtively at what
he was doing from the corner of my left eye and saw he was looking at his
holiday snaps full of lots of people sitting at dining tables in restaurants eating
and cheering.
 
Joseph was watching
me looking and mouthed at me
“what’s he doing?”
“holiday snaps” I mouthed back
“Uh?”
“holiday snaps”
“Uh?” and so I got the vanity mirror out of my handbag, I angled the mirror
away from me, towards the man’s computer and facing Joseph so he could see for
himself.
 
I had to lean right back
in my seat, back, back, back, merge into the cushions, and still Joseph
couldn’t see, he motioned which way to direct the mirror with a finger slightly
and surreptitiously moving in front of his nose and my mirror moved in the
direction he desired.
 
But he still
couldn’t see.
 
We were laughing the
more because we couldn’t laugh and couldn’t draw attention to ourselves.
 
Horses outside, gypsy horses and
caravans, thin looking cattle and sheep escaping through hedges for more grass.
 
I got nearer and nearer the laptop,
further and further from the window, concentrating on the view for Joseph and
forgot about the man, forgot about the green blur beyond me.
 
And then, out of my blue, resignedly, the man looked at me, and I looked slowly
but extravagantly away, back out of the window, I could see two fallow deer
now, shaded beneath a hedge.
 
He
looked at Joseph who stared at him in anticipation, not rudeness and then he
turned his laptop around for Joseph to see his photos and we all burst out
laughing.
 
Stones being thrown in to
a pond.
 
“My holiday in China two
weeks ago.”
 
He didn’t seem to mind
really.
 
We chatted a little and
Joseph told the man that he’d travelled extensively around China and that he
spoke Cantonese, and the man went from thinking that we were vile grown-up
children to something interesting and all the badness was rubbed away with not
even a trace of what was there before.
 
Joseph talked to the man and I went in to a daze.
 
I looked out of the window and wondered
if the grass smelt the same here, if the birds sounded the same here, if the
soil would feel the same under my back and between my fingers.
 
I saw a buzzard grabbing at a dead
rabbit, hoop and away, dandelion heads fluffing all around him.
 
And the constant noise of the train on
the tracks, soft and then sharp, chorus and then crescendo, so constant it is
silent.
 
Everything was smooth now
and in slow motion, everything was silent and my head was bursting with Charlie
and home and everything here was skimming off past me.
 
Whoop and it’s gone.
 
“What shall we call this summer?” said
Joseph “last summer was the summer of love.
 
What shall this one be?
 
Summer of excitement?
 
Adventure?
 
Knowledge?”
“Summer of sin.”

We
got to London and went exploring, we went to Sloane Street, I’m hopeless in
London, I have no idea where anything is, I get taxis everywhere and never look
at a map so I have no idea where I’m going.
 
And I won’t learn because it’s London,
it’s not home, it’s not important.

Sloane
street is a funny place, everyone looks positively and externally moneyed.
 
All the men have hairstyles and all the
women have attitude.
 
It is a fast
place, full of fleeting shoulders and fading footsteps, but rather exciting,
just for a day.
 
There is so much
hardness in London, everywhere is concrete and stone and solid and
manmade.
 
Walls and pavements and
buildings.
 
I am contained, there is
no real way out, it is a labyrinth and nowhere to hide, no escape routes.
 
I plan a murder in my head, I would be
found here, I plan a highway robbing here, we would be found.
 
It is not a real place, it is
suffocating.
 
We visited my
favourite perfumery.
 
I am a
sybarite.
 
We visited shoe shops and
walked past ‘how to make your house look as if you have style and taste’ shops.
  
Joseph watched men watch me.
 
Men are more blatant in London than in
Devon it seems.
 
I feel I am being
predated but I’m a weasel in the kitchen.
 
I’ve told you before, I’m lethal.

We
walked up the street, we changed our minds and walked down the street, we
strode around and about, colourful in colourless, and then there, on a corner,
as if waiting for someone was a very lovely sky blue shirt, my sky, and at the
top of the lovely sky blue shirt was a very lovely face that was looking
intently at me, smiling at me.
 
I
only glanced at him, it was a brief accidental recognition of his looking at
me, but that glance seemed to me a long time and all noise was halted and
silence marked his eyes.
 
I don’t
stare, I’m not interested in other people stuffing my head with unnecessary
nonsense, but his look entered me with every breath I took.
 
Push it out, breathe out, but I
can’t.
 
He was lightning coming from
nowhere, burning me.
 
And maybe I
just told you that to make myself feel better about what I did.
 
Maybe I don’t want you to think I’m very
bad.
 
Maybe.

A
stag on the corner in the dimpsy light of an empty meadow, a delicious green
mist behind him and just him standing alone.
 
I was lost in time, remembering setting
a trap for a lost hawk at 5am one October morning and out of the misty wet
dark, I was aware of a closeness and I looked to my left and there, just a few
feet from me was a magnificent red stag, just looking at me, just wondering
what I was doing, not frightened, just wondering.
 
He could have spoken to me and he would
have said
“morning!
 
What are you up to?” and
I would have said
“I’m trying to catch a hawk with my home made stick traps” and then he just
walked off.
 
And when I told Charlie
he said “you have to be very careful, they’re rutting at the moment, they can
be really aggressive”
“I know they are, but it was fine.
 
It is always fine.”
 
It was
more than beautiful.
 
‘I sit here
every day, looking at the sky, ever wondering why, I dream my dreams away and
I’m living for today in my mind’s eye’.

Joseph
saw blue shirt man still looking at me as I still saw the stag and he spun
around, 1000 miles an hour, “give him your number” his face is in my face, his
eyes are wide and wild and his mouth is open, jester-style, his hands on my
shoulders “NO!” I have stopped in my tracks, one step, two steps, third step
too short and my foot behind kicks the one in front “yes”
“no” and I try to look away, but he jerks me back
“yes, summer of sin.
 
Remember?”
“Oh my God”
 
I laughed, excited by
doing something so unlike me, got my biro out of my swiss army knife, rummaged
through torches, cigars, paper and baby oil, sex toys and rubbish in my handbag
and I wrote my mobile number down on the inside of a cigar box.
 
I walked over to him as he watched me
and handed the paper to him and he put out his hand and took it, and then,
because I am a human, I spoke “I’m sure this is a really dreadful thing to do,
and I’ve never done anything like it before, but here is my number, I think I’d
really like it if you called me” and I felt my cheeks go hot and knew I would
be blushing.
 
He looked at my face
the whole time, he looked at my eyes as if he could see that I was telling the
truth and that it mattered if I was telling the truth.
  
He held my paper in his
fingers.
 
But he didn’t speak
because he is a Stag.
 
It is all
slow motion.
  
I’m short
sighted, but he still looked handsome close up and his shirt still looked good.
 
It all took a moment and then I was off,
with Joseph, struck dumb by doing such a bold thing.
 
But there is no excuse, I did it.
 
I was a magpie scurrying off across the
floor after pulling at one of the cat’s tails.
 
I was a musket landing on a cold cooked
sausage.
 
I was a balloon, escaped
from a child’s hand and was floating fast to freedom.
 
I was stamping all over Charlie and his
useless, passionless dismissal of me.
“You naughty, naughty thing, that’s just too, too exciting” and we dribbled
with laughter, our bodies bent, our legs held together, held on tight to each
other and jumped about, everything had changed and we were going to be
bad.
 
“So, does Mr handsome call
you?
 
Or think you’re a hooker?” Oh
God, the thought of him thinking I was a hooker was just too revolting.
 

We
went to MacDonald’s for something to eat and I was disappointed because they
didn’t have onion rings.
 
I told
Joseph about the time I went to MacDonald’s in New Delhi and a great big rat
ran out from the table in front of us, but we just carried on eating, things
are different there.
 
I have seen
hundreds of people die in India and it’s not shocking there.
 
Nothing’s shocking, that was Perry
Farrell wasn’t it?
 
We eat, we rest,
I kick off my shoes, we put down our bags, we try and work out what language
the two old ladies sitting next to us are speaking and decide it’s Greek.
 
We breathe out heavily, the weariness
and the noise of London streets, we see people, millions of people through the
windows, we eat what we have bought and we go out.
 
A policeman is standing on the steps and
as he sees us come towards the glass door, he very gallantly opens it for us
and we swish out through it.
 
It is
as it should be, as it is in my head and I am enjoying myself.
 
I check my phone now and then and then again
and again, but Charlie hasn’t phoned.
 
But I do not pollute our atmosphere to say ‘he hasn’t phoned’, I just
know he hasn’t, I just know it.
 

“What
next?
 
Cigars?” and we go looking
for my cigars in London, we are two bad mice.
 
We hold on tight, we scurry, we jump, we
laugh we stride, we tuck our tails high up on our arms.
 
We head for the hotel.
 
We are sharing a twin room, we always do
that on our adventures.
 
We get to
the hotel and go up to our room, room 177.
 
And whilst I look out of the window Joseph grabs the shower first and
then I go and unpack my clothes from my bag, but first of all check my phone
again.
 
Charlie still hasn’t phoned,
but maybe he has and I check it again.
 
He hasn’t.
 
He won’t.
 
It is his fault, whatever happens is his
fault and he could have stopped me.
  
And my phone rings.
 
I jump,
I smile, it is an unknown number.
 
I
stare at it, funny how you do that, I wouldn’t normally answer it,
 
but this time, just in case, but I was
sure it wouldn’t be, but the whooshing waves in my pelvic region told me that
I’d love it if it were blue shirt man “hello” I said with gentle anticipation
“hello, who’s this?”
“It’s the man you so rashly gave your number to” his voice is lovely, it’s
smooth and creamy and swishy and alive with ripples and tiny fish and pebbles
falling from one plastic bucket to another.
 
I sink down onto the bed.
 
And I laugh, I don’t simper, it is
different, even from the beginning “man I so rashly gave my number to, what is
your name?”
“Ed.
 
Edward Harton.
 
And yours?”
“Gussie”
“That’s a very….. unusual name” I laugh, or maybe it’s a simper that time
“It’s short for Augusta” I sigh
“Well, I like Gussie.
 
Gussie, would
you let me take you to dinner this evening or tomorrow evening? Or probably
both!” his voice is measured and calm
“I think I’d love to, but I’m only in London for a night”
“Oh, where do you live?”
“Devon”
“how exotic!” he is teasing me
 
“What part?”
“Do you know Devon?”
“I do”
“South Devon”
“Do you know a very nice farmer called Jim Johnson?”
“How on earth do you know Jim of all people?” I am not measured or calm, I hear
myself squealing, like a little farm pig running around a muddy paddock.
 
It’s quite revolting.
 
“I do a little rough shooting on his
farm now and then” and that, I think, is meant to be.
 
My insides have melted all over the
floor.
 
We talked for 14 minutes and
38 seconds of the beauty of Devon, of the alien excitingness of London.
 
He’d seen my little white house from the
bay and remembers seeing a bright red towel with a picture of a cat’s bottom on
it hanging from the washing line.
 
It is a small world.
 
He
suggests a time and a place and I agree with everything he suggests, and we get
on so well, that, before he puts down the phone I say “You don’t have anyone
for Joseph do you?”
“Joseph?”
“my nephew.
 
He’ll be coming too”
and at the other end I heard the well-bred faint murmur of disappointment “I
look forward to seeing you both at 8pm.”
“JOSEPH, QUICK, COME OUT, QUICKLY,
QUICKLY
”
 
I am leaning against the bathroom door,
my shoulder firm against it, shouting over the shower noise “why you filthy
whore?”
 
And I gabble, gabble,
tripping over my words and now he comes out of the bathroom, red and wet and
uncomfortable, wrapped in a towel with an angry mark on his left temple where
he’s been squeezing a spot
 
“leave
your face”
“stop it!
 
I couldn’t help it.”
 
But his spot has already disappeared
from my head.
 
We are sitting on our
respective beds talking about blue shirt man, and Joseph asks me 100 questions,
but every second one is “will you sleep with him?”
“No, I haven’t even met him properly yet”
“bet you do”
“No”
“why?”
“stop it”
“you’ve seen enough of him to give him your number”
“you made me give him my number” but Joseph is serious
“I can’t ever make you do anything freak, you always do exactly as you
want.
 
Will you sleep with him?
 
Because I think you should,
 
I
would.
 
And don’t tell me you’ve got
a boyfriend, because you haven’t, Charlie is someone’s husband and it’s not
going anywhere Aunty Gussie, if it was, it would have years ago.”
 
I sit back and my eyes open wider and my
mouth is set,
 
I am staring at
Joseph, not in anger, just in sad realisation.
 
“Ohh, precious little kitten, I’m sorry,
but you know it’s true.”
 
But I
wasn’t angry with him, just a bit sad that’s all and I went to have my bath, to
do my hair to get ready for my next adventure, far away from Devon and
Charlie.
 
I am love, and my love is
physical.
 
But I will be me and I
won’t get carried away again, just for fun, because this is my life.