Come Not When I Am Dead (16 page)

“What the fuck
have you done?”
 
Jo was in the hall,
alone, waiting for me
 
“how do you know?” I’m whispering
“It’s alright, he’s in the shower.
  
You prat Gussie, you can’t fucking miss it.
 
I don’t think he knows though.
 
What a fucking mess.
 
You stupid fucking prat.”
“What do you know?
 
What do you
think you know?”
“Just tell me.
 
You’ve been seeing
the vet haven’t you?
 
And two-timing
him with soldier boy”
“don’t call him that”
“two-timing him with Edward”
“
whisper
Jo.
 
What am I going to do?
 
What do I do now?
 
Tell me.
 
Have I messed it up?” and I dropped on
to the bottom stair, heavy and heartless and I heard Edward shout from upstairs
“I’m having a shower.”
 
He didn’t
sound real.
 
He’s just a pretend
thing.
  
“You can’t take it out
on him.
 
It’s not his fault” Jo sat
by my side on the stair
“I’m not”
“yes you are, I can see it in your face.
 
I think you should tell me all about it now.
 
Poor old thing, poor old stupid thing”
and she took her efag out of her mouth and patted me on the back.
 
Poor sweet baby.

Make me fall.
 
Make a wall tumble.
 
Make the skies darken.
 
Make something real happen, real so we
can react to it.
 
I don’t understand
this.
 
“What do I do?” I said to Jo, pounding, pounding, pounding in my head “what do
I do?”
“Tell me” she said, and I did
“Make it better” I wanted to say “make it better.”
 
I wanted to spit and kick.
 
I want to heal things and I want to ruin
things.
 
I want to be here to
understand, but I don’t understand, but I should.

And when Edward came downstairs again
I couldn’t say anything to him, but he was so full of my family, so full of
Jim, so full of Charlie that I don’t think he noticed anything was wrong.
 
It’s not his fault.
 
Of course it’s not his fault.
 
When we went to bed he made love to me,
and I let him.

“Will you come fishing then with me
this morning?” he was lying behind me, curled up into my body, stroking the
side of my face, loving me.
 
“Fishing?”
“I told you.
 
Your friend Charlie’s
asked me fishing this morning, I thought we could both go”
“Charlie?
 
You certainly didn’t tell
me.
 
You want to go fishing with
Charlie?
 
You
are
joking?” my body reeling, turning into him, snake hissing at
him.
“I noticed this yesterday Gussie, you don’t like him do you?
 
What’s he done then to earn your
distaste?”
“It’s not that”
“what is it then?”
“Don’t go” I turned around in the bed, shuffled into place, warm and soft and
faced him and held his face, our two naked bodies feeding off each other’s
warmth “don’t go.
 
Spend the day
with me.”
 
I don’t like you anymore
I was thinking
this has ended
I was thinking
this
is a game now, a horrible, stupid game.
“But I’ve
said
I would.
 
Tell me why.
 
Why don’t you like him?” he is delicate,
he shuffles himself a little away from me, all the greater to observe me.
 
“I don’t.
 
He’s not very nice.
 
He hasn’t been very nice to me” I am a
liar
“what’s he done?”
“Oh Edward, I don’t know, it’s a long time ago, I don’t want to talk about
it.
 
But please don’t go”
“you come with me then” I feel frustration building up within me, I feel
scribbles and harsh lines in my head.
 
“NO.
 
Just don’t go” my
temper is short.
“Gussie, you’re being weird.
 
Tell
me.
 
Tell me or else I will go” and
his foot is down
“You’ll go will you?
 
You’ll go from
my house, out fishing with a ‘friend’ of mine and not listen to anything I
say?
 
Are you that fucking crass?”
and he was silent, it was the swear word that did it.
 
He’s one of those men who don’t like
women to swear in anger.
 
Tick,
tick, tick…..The look he turned on me was scorn.
 
He got out of bed and got dressed in
honourable silence “Edward please don’t go” I am a snake, a snake in the grass,
a snake in the bed, I hate this manipulation.
 
I hate it.
“You’re making me feel Gussie that there’s more to this than you’re telling
me.
 
What’s going on?” what do I
say?
 
What can I say?
 
I feel it all slipping through my
fingers
“Nothing’s going on.
 
Please don’t
go though”
“I’m most definitely going”
“EDWARD, DON’T YOU DARE GO” I shouted, furious as he went through my bedroom
door down the stairs to the kitchen.
 
And I scrabbled up out of my bed, propelled by this burning hot
rage.
 
I grabbed his shirt and tied
it around my body. I ran to Jo’s room, cold toes, frightened, frantic, trip,
trip, trip, tick, tick, tick.
 
Poor
old Jo, half awake.
 
I switched her
light on, opened the curtains and I shook her shoulder “Jo, come on, get up.
 
Jo, wake up.
 
You have to go.
 
Jo
please
.”
 
And I dragged this bleary-eyed friend of
mine out of her bed, her great long nighty twisted around her knees.
 
“Please hurry up Jo, hurry up, Edward’s
going fishing with Charlie, please Jo, will you follow them?”
 
I am a dog weeing on the carpet.
 
I helped her get dressed, pushed her
this way and that, grabbed her clothes from the floor as she snarled at me,
tired and sleepy, but she did go.
 
Too many seconds, tick, tick, ticking in time to my galloping
heart.
 
“I would do the same for you
Jo.”
“I know you would, but I wouldn’t be so fucking stupid in the first
place.”
 
I know, I know.
 

But should I go?
 
I can’t go, they’d see me or my car,
it’s too risky.
 
But I should go
I thought as in my
haste, through the noise of my head I heard Edward’s car start up and saw him
driving up the track, careful around the potholes. “Park your car in the lay-by
around the corner from theirs and just follow the river upstream.
 
Keep in the trees and just watch
them.
 
Can you just watch them Jo?
 
And make sure it’s all OK?”.
 
Is this love or fear or self
preservation, what is most important?
 
I don’t know.
 
Don’t let me
be caught, don’t let either of them lose respect for me.
 
Look after me.
 
Let nothing be destroyed.
 
“How the fuck can I do that, they’ll
bloody well see me won’t they?”
“just keep in the trees”
like a deer
I’m thinking, lurking deep and dark and shadowed,
 
all-seeing eyes “but just watch
them.
 
I need to know.
 
What do you think will happen?
 
Will Charlie tell Edward?
 
Jo?
 
What do you think, will he tell him?”
“I don’t fucking know.
 
Probably.
 
How should I know?
 
You’re a bloody prat.
 
Go and put some fucking clothes on,
you’re freaking me out dressed like that.”
 
I know I’m a bloody prat.
 
I
know what will happen, I know that Charlie will tell Edward about us.
 
I am a blue bottle in a jar, ugly and
ungainly, banging away at the glass, dirty and vulnerable in my stupid
captivity too large and cumbersome to fly.
 
Too stupid.
 
All wrong.
 
And is the fear because I have no
control over this?
 
I don’t know.

Half an hour, that’s how long it will
take her to get to the river, no, longer because she doesn’t know the route,
say forty minutes.
 
And how long
will they be fishing for?
 
No time
at all if Charlie tells him straight away.
 
But maybe he won’t tell him right away.
 
And they have to say hello, get down to
business, fishing or talking.
 
And
why would Charlie ask him?
 
Why?
 
If not to tell
him?
 
Of course he will tell
him.
 
So, let’s say forty minutes
one way, twenty minutes there and thirty minutes back again.
 
One and a half hours.
 
And I work it out again.
 
And I write it down just to make
sure.
 
And I check the time
again.
 
I tried to paint but I
couldn’t, I snapped my brushes and ripped up my paper.
 
I scratched the table with my pen and
broke the nib.
 
I smoked too many
cigars.
 
I couldn’t keep still.
 
I couldn’t keep still.
 
I called Jo again and again but there is
no signal by the river, I know that.
 
Stupid fingers on the keys, futile and fumbling.
 
I tried to read but I could not
read.
 
I couldn’t concentrate.
 
Someone came to the house and I hid
behind the kitchen cupboards, I cannot talk to anyone.
 
I checked the clock and my mobile phone
and checked the clock again and again.
 
Checked it in different rooms.
 
It has been two hours, two and a half hours, three hours.
 
I don’t know what will happen.
 
I lay down in the garden, on my back and
tried to distract myself with grass.
 
I tried but I cannot wank.
 
I
went to see Sergeant, but he flew frantically about his aviary disturbed at my
unease.
 
And my phone rang and every
call that came I cut off right away just in case Jo tried to call me.
 
I tried to eat but my food was dry in my
mouth and I couldn’t swallow it.
 
I
drank coke and it tasted like poison.
 
I pinched my arm to see if I could feel.
 
And then Jo came back “you’ve been
ages.
 
What happened?”
“you’re not going to like this.” I was sitting on the edge of a chair in the
kitchen, trying to be calm, my breathing heavy, trying not to cry, I know what
it is, I am thinking about myself, and only myself.
 
She turned her back on me to take off
her jacket and put it on the kitchen door hook, rounded and fat with years of
white emulsion.
 
Make me understand
it.
 
“Just tell me quickly.
 
I’m so frightened.”
 
Or maybe don’t tell me, it has happened,
whatever has happened has happened and I can’t do anything about it.
 
Maybe
just leave me to myself.
 
Maybe just
let me sleep and forget them.
 
Maybe
just don’t talk to me
I am thinking.
 
“I found them and I kept in the trees hidden and all they were doing was
fishing.
 
I don’t think Charlie’s a
very good fisherman is he?”
“It doesn’t matter.
 
What happened?”
I was shaking, my fingers running all over the table, this way, that way, in
time to the tiny breaths I was taking.
 
“It was all fine and they were a bit apart from each other, then Charlie
went through the river to Edward and, I just couldn’t hear above the river,
it’s so bloody noisy but I could hear his voice raised.
 
Then he sort of got hold of Edward”
“what do you mean?
 
Grabbed him?”
“well, he definitely had his hands on his shoulders and I couldn’t quite make
it out.
 
I was trying to move round
the trees to see clearly.
 
And I’m
so sorry Gussie.
 
I’m so sorry, but
I had an alert on my phone”
“but there’s no signal there”
“well, that’s what I thought, but I got a text and I just had to go back to my
car to put a trade on”
“No!”
“I was gone for five minutes, that’s all, maybe not even that.
 
But when I got back they weren’t there.”
“But why did you go?
 
You were
supposed to be watching them.” Is this dread real?
 
I was holding on to the table.
 
I wanted to be sick.
 
My body was aching, aching so much.
 
My shoulders hurt.
 
I stood up and walked around the
kitchen.
 
“I know.
 
I’m sorry.
 
I shouldn’t have gone.
 
I’m sorry.
 
I’ve let you down.”
“What happened then?”
“I looked for them up river, I walked all the way to the top, there’s a little
island up there and fencing across, so I reckoned that was the end of your
bit.
 
Then I walked all the way down
and didn’t see them anywhere.
 
I walked
all the way up again and back but I couldn’t see them so I gave up and came
home.
 
I’m sorry Gussie and when I
got back to the road Charlie’s car had gone but Edward’s was still there.”
“But why would Charlie go and not Edward?
 
Do you think they were fighting?
 
Do you think Charlie started a fight with Edward?”
“I don’t know.
 
It looked like he
was fighting, or starting a fight, but I don’t know, they could have been
dancing for all I know”
“that’s hardly likely.
 
Oh for
fuck’s sake Jo.
 
Do you really think
they were fighting?
 
And if they had
a fight why would Edward’s car still be there?
 
Do you think maybe Charlie beat him
up?
 
He wouldn’t be able to though
would he?
 
He’s not as strong as
Edward, and Edward’s a soldier, he must be good at fighting.
 
I think that Charlie wouldn’t fight fair
though.
 
I can’t imagine him
fighting fair.”
“I don’t know.
 
I am sorry Gussie,
Charlie had one of those things in his hand that they smack fish on the head
with.”
“In his hand or attached to his waders?”
“In his hand” the last water of a bath, swirling down the plug hole
“Do you know what that’s called?
 
It’s called a ‘priest’ because of it’s ability to kill mercifully.”