Come Not When I Am Dead (19 page)

In the morning he kissed my cheek and
stroked my face gently when he woke up.
 
He thought I was fast asleep, but I was half awake and just didn’t want
to talk to him, not yet. I don’t know what to say to him, and I cannot reassure
him.
 
His hand touched my face, and
in my half sleep I reached out and held his hand against my cheek.
 
He treads lightly out of the room and I
turn over and go back to sleep, just for a while and then Poppenjoy jumped up
on to my pillow and rubbed her furry head all over my face and cleaned my nails
with her teeth, she lick, lick, licked the cheek where Charlie’s hand was, her
rough little tongue erasing his touch, going, going, gone.
 
A butterflies wing disintegrating, made
ragged in the rain.
 
It is time to
get up.

I get a cigar and a glass of diet
coke and go outside, into the cold yard in my silk robe, hugging it tightly to
me, billows of grey smoke leaving my mouth and floating up over the shrubs onto
a journey.
 
The sparrows just up and
about on the garden wall and a shaft of light cuts across the track where I see
a shattered car window and I stand and stare at it, but I don’t move.
 
A rabbit runs out from underneath the
paddock gate, and I watch him because he’s running too fast for any fear of
me.
 
There will be something chasing
him and before my thoughts have settled in my head, I see the stoat, following
closely, all four legs off the ground at once, in urgent pursuit.
  
And then once they have passed the
tree, once they skirt around that bit of wall, once they tear into the orchard,
soft grass hampering victim feet, I hear the screams.
 
And there’s nothing you can do.
 
I bring the glass up to my mouth and
take a sip, a gulp of blood from a rabbit’s neck.
 
If someone is dead it will be traced
back here.
 
If someone is injured,
they’ll go to hospital and if it’s serious they’ll say they’ve been here, even
if they were up to no good nobody could prove it if nothing was stolen I
suppose.
 
If they
weren’t
hurt or killed and they all
escaped unscathed then would they come back to get us again out of revenge?
 
If Charlie has killed someone I can’t do
anything about it and there’s no way I’m going to lie for him to the police,
they always find out in the end, and anyway, I think he’d break down under a
simple police questioning and then where would I be?
 
I cross the track to the barns and look
through them, I can’t see that anything has been moved or taken, I kick things
about and a rat comes wobbling out towards me, dying slowly in poisoned agony,
I grab a wooden chair leg and smash it down on it’s head.
 
It is dead and I watch it for a moment
before I go in to the house.
 
It’s
surprisingly easy to kill rats.
 
I
remember… It doesn’t matter, it’s not the time for tales.

I sit in my kitchen, still in my
dressing robe, worrying.
 
Worrying
does no good. Charlie phones me and all I say to him is “just wait and
see.
 
It was a bloody awful thing to
do, but you’ve done it now, so let’s hope it’s all OK.
 
But I’ll look after you my handsome
soldier.”
 
And then I kick myself
for saying soldier when I didn’t mean a real soldier.
 
But the tables have turned.
 
He wants me to call Frank and see if I
can find a way to ask him if there’ve been any dead criminals found in ditches
or something like that.
 
I go to the
bathroom and look at my face to see what it looks like when it’s worrying,
there’s a big worry line between my eyes.
 
I smile and pretend it’s all OK, and then worry and then smile.
 
It’s all in your head.
 
And then I slap my cheek because it’s
not all in your head, this is real life.
 

Raffle Buffle sits on a pile of
towels up on a shelf watching me, purring loudly and asking for a caress.
 
His perfectly round eyes the most
innocent sight I have ever seen.
  
I would marry him if I was a lady cat.
 
I hold my hand on him firmly so he can
feel all my love, “Oh Raffle Buffle, chocolate truffle, what are we going to do
with Charlie?
 
I know, I’ll clean up
that windscreen.
 
Should I clean up
the windscreen?” I say into his flank
 
“It could be criminal evidence” I say to the Fuff, the chocolate
truff.
 
“Probably I shouldn’t.
 
I don’t know what to do about that.”

I am still worrying.
 
I go to my bedroom and get dressed and
then I think I need a bit of a change of scene so I put my boiler suit on over
my dress.
 
I check all the cats, I
stroke them all and make sure all the windows and doors are shut and then I
leave.
 
I lock the front door, get
in my car and then go back to the front door to make sure that I really have
locked it.
 
I am sucking the side of
my fist, I look in the rear view mirror and say “what the fuck are we going to
do?” and I gulp down my breath.
 
The
day is too sunny, too blisteringly hot for death and disaster.
 

I had been gone for about three
hours, smoking cigars on Dartmoor, sitting by the Taw, dipping my toes into
chill water from boulders.
 
Watching
roaming ponies and creeping shadows and fast passing clouds.
 
And when I began to think that my worry
was exaggerated by myself, when I began to feel that I was nurturing the drama,
I got in my car and drove home.
 
I
drove down the track to my little house, looking up so I didn’t see broken
glass.
 
I parked next to Jo’s car
and noted how clean it was.
 
I went into
the house, straight to the kitchen and heard Jo chop, chop, chopping
something.
 
Here comes a chopper to
chop off your head.

The kitchen was innocently sunny as
if nothing had happened and radio 3 was playing some simple piano piece.
 
I would have expected strings
today.
 
I smell garlic and cucumber
in the air.
 
“I don’t like cucumber”
I say, but she ignores me.
 
I turn
the radio off.
 
“Oi! Put that back
on” but I ignore her “where’ve you been?
 
Up a bit early weren’t you?
 
And there’s fuck-all in the fridge.
 
If you finish things you have to replace them Gussie.
 
It’s as simple as that.”
 
And even though she’s nagging, I’m glad
she’s there.
 
“I’ll make us curry
later, I promise.
 
When did you get
back Jo?” I am too, too tiny “about two hours ago, there was a bloody awful
mess on the drive, did you do that?
 
I bet you hadn’t even noticed it, loads of smashed glass.
 
What was that I wonder?” and I sucked in
my bottom lip and looked stupid “anyway, I cleaned it up and I unblocked that
drain too.
 
I brought some more wood
in and I cleaned the downstairs bathroom.
 
It’s my new tablets, they’re bloody brilliant.”
“Blimey, you can come again” I said as the ghost of grandma would.
 
Tell me a story, tell me a story and
make me believe it.
 
Wrap me up and
keep me warm and cossetted, tell me it will all be ok.
 
“When I was little, Jo, I used to say to
grandma, ‘will you make me a cake?’ and she’d say ‘what would I want to do that
for?
 
You’ll only eat it.’”
 
She was very funny.”
 
“Are you OK?”
“Yes”
“No, you’re not.
 
Sit down” and she
flusters around me, and from behind my back she gave me a hug.

Rah, rah, rah
I say in my head over and over again,
because I can’t think of anything else.
 
But I keep seeing dead men in ditches, I see smashed trucks splattered
with blood, or missing limbs and a roadside gangster, stepped out of an El
Greco painting, bandaging up and biting down on sticks. “Thank you for looking
after me Jo.
 
I do appreciate it you
know” and that weary little smile I give her is the last look on that rabbit’s
face this morning.
 
Thank you for my
life and deliver me safely on my next journey.

‘Hello, hello, can anybody hear
me?
 
Is anybody out there?
 
Is there anybody home?’.
 
And I too am comfortably numb.
 
I feel there is a persistent wasp in my
garden, in my space, buzz, buzz, buzzing around my head.
 
I am sitting on the grass in my little
garden within my bigger garden, and it is lovely and cool and calm and
quiet.
 
I’m wearing grandma’s green
and ragged gardening anorak over a red and pink dress, bare legs and green flip
flops.
 
I’m smoking a cigar and
sitting on my arse.
 
A butterfly
flies past me, bouncing along on an invisible elastic and Sgt jingles to me
from the bottom of the garden in his aviary.
 
A silly robin flew in to keep him company
today and now all that is left of him are a mass of orange tinted feathers and
two spindly legs on his eating log.
 
Now you see it, now you don’t.
 
I picked up the legs and put them with my collection of birds legs,
broken eggs and old bits of nests in my treasure cabinet “why do you have birds
legs in a cabinet Gussie, it’s really disgusting.
 
Why can’t you put silver there or
something like any normal person.
 
It’s not right.
 
You are
weird you know Gussie” whines Jo.
  
I don’t care.
 
I would rather
lie amongst grass than be taken out on a yacht.
 
I would rather be given love than
jewels.
 
I would rather see a hare’s
form than a big house.
 
I would
rather be quiet for ever than waste just one minute talking nonsense.
 
And I am a giant striding off across the
landscape, just seen from behind.
 
Tell me a story, tell me a story.

I’ve made the tortoises pen twice the
size today and they’re quietly happy about that.
 
There are seagulls in from the sea, over
the fields and a sparrow lands, fluuuuur, in the shrub beside me.
 
It is quiet today and in half an hour I
think I will go down and check my bees and maybe take some honey.
 
I’m out of sorts.
 
I’m tired.
 
It’s difficult to cope when you’re
tired.
 
My right eye is twitching
like a bastard.
 
The sparrow is
doing acrobatics now and turning himself upside down beside me, he sits on a
post, closer to me, all handsome in his dusty brown.
 
He has a big dark bib and raises his
head high now, making his neck unfeasibly long, all the greater to watch me
by.
 
I want him to come closer and
so I keep still as a house.
 
I am
vaguely aware of Charlie, of Percy, of Edward, it’s all so complicated, people
are so complicated.
 
It is a shame I
suppose, in some ways that I need sex so often, but I do, I can’t wank for the
rest of my life.
 
I dragged myself
up from the lawn and hugged the anorak close to me, I watched Everingham
catching flies at the window and then went to bed.
 
I slept for about 40 minutes and felt so
much better.
 
Then I went strimming,
but my head is somewhere else and not anywhere I want it to be at the moment
and I only did two hours, each minute feeling like ten, and then I went home
again, sticky and itchy and frustrated with balsam bits all over me, down my
bra, in my knickers, all in my hair.
 
I like to wait until they are utterly dry and changed in colour and then
let my hair down and shake all the bits out and listen to the noise they make
as they hit the tiled floor in the bathroom, tinkling and tickling the surface,
tiny, tiny trunks and branches they look like, a miniature felled forest.
 
And then Jo goes in later on and says
“pissing hell Gussie, don’t leave such a bloody mess everywhere.”
 
I think it’s funny.
  
She is a part of this house as if
she’s always been here, she is a wafting breeze carrying me along on a lyrical
journey, I feel as if I’m flying but she keeps hold of my string.
 
But she has to keep hold tight, because
that string could just be tugged out of her hand.
 
Nothing is certain.
 
Nothing is for ever.
 
I’m frightened.

There are three cats on my bed
waiting for treats.
 
Three cats,
where there were once, not too long ago, four cats.
 
I miss Coningsby, it feels all raw again.
 
Maybe there is no magic.
 
I’m frightened because maybe there is no
magic.
 
I still pray every night,
but my prayers have changed, I now say ‘thank you for letting Coningsby and I
be together (because we were for so long) and thank you for letting her come
back again very soon’.
 
But it all
feels dead up there, where I’m praying to.
 
I don’t feel the universe beating and pulsating with life any more.
 
It feels cardboard and it feels deaf and
I don’t feel that anyone’s listening to my prayers any more.
 
I didn’t ever think she’d die.
 
She was me and I was her and she should
never have died.
 
And it’s not ‘just
a cat’ don’t let any idiot say that.
 
There is a big, round hole in my life where she was, a big visible
cricket ball sized hole, too gaping to be filled in by anything.
 
I am idly but aggressively fiddling with
my putty rubber.
 
It is dirty and
tough and falls to the ground, plomb, and it’s on the floor boards, I look down
at it, all fat and dirty and misshapen and I leave it there and leave the room.

Later on, in the evening Jo and I sat
together in lazy cosiness and clutter, our feet up, mine on grandma’s stool and
Jo with hers on the sofa, tucked up under a cushion and the fire blazing and
roaring.
 
We talked about love and
relationships and men and boyfriends and lucky escapes and bad things and
horrible things with biscuit long pauses between and then Frank walked in,
getting his chair slightly stuck in the doorway and too much of a draft chasing
in behind him.
 
After we’d lazily
greeted him, too warm and stupefied to stand up, Jo said “Tell Frank what you
just told me.”
“No” and I turned a look on her which said ‘shut up’ but she didn’t see it, or
ignored it.
“Tell me what?
 
What have you got to
tell me?” and Frank sank down on his chair, rubbing his hands towards the
flames “tell Grandpa Frank.”
“Tell him Gussie, it’s fucking disgusting.
 
Sorry Frank.
 
Gussie tell
him” and a story told in intimate dark shadows and contained air is different
when the door opens bringing a fresh atmosphere and new ears.
 
“You wouldn’t want to hear it, it’s not
very nice.
 
Oh Frank, don’t be
weird.
 
It’s just a horrible story,
in the past, it can’t do any good telling you”
“you let me be the judge of that.”
“Go on, tell him Gussie, or I will.
 
Why should you keep something like that a secret?
 
That’s how men get away with that sort
of thing, women are just too embarrassed to tell.
 
It’s fucking disgusting.
 
Sorry Frank”
“Jo, sometimes I think you over-step the mark.
 
It’s my story and you have no right to
tell it at all.”
“I’m not going to beg darling, but if it’s horrible and it’s upset you I think
you should tell your old Frank.”

I told Frank how I used to have a
boyfriend called Richard and he lived in a shared house with three or four
other chaps.
 
One day I went round
to see him and he wasn’t there, none of them were there except Mark.
 
“Come up and listen to music” Mark said
“Richard won’t be long.”
 
So, I went
up to his room on the top floor to listen to music with him.
 
When I walked through the door he locked
it and as I turned around to see what that sound was, he took the key out of
the lock and put it in his pocket and he said to me “you’re not leaving this
room until you give me a blow job.”
 
Frank was looking down at the floor all this time, between his knees and
then he looked up at me, I cannot measure him.
 
“I remember that stupid boyfriend of
yours, Richard, always stoned, you wasted your time with him, but I think you
used to smoke that stuff too didn’t you?
 
And this Mark must have been Mark Davies then?”
 
“Yes, it was Mark Davies, shall I carry on?”
 
I told Frank that I thought Mark was
joking.
 
I hoped he was joking.
 
“Don’t be horrible” I said to Mark,
pretending to laugh and trying not to show that I was frightened but he didn’t
smile or laugh or put the key back and unlock the door, but he moved towards
me.
 
“I’m not joking Gussie.
 
You’re not leaving this room until you
suck me off.”
 
And I mumbled that
phrase, crude in front of gentleness.
 
I told Frank how you sum the situation up, you measure his strength and
bulk against yours, you can see in his eye that he’s serious, and you know
you’re going to get hurt, you try to get out and he pushes you back.
 
He was ugly but his ugliness never
bothered me until that moment and suddenly he was very ugly.
 
I tried again to get past him, but he
pushed me firmly into the corner of the room.
 
“You’re not leaving” he said and I knew
I wasn’t.
 
And I heard myself
pleading, but not in vulnerability, in forced bravery and from the window to my
left I saw how high up I was from the pavement.
 
He pushed me tight against the wall, all
quiet in that room and people walking about outside happy and I knew that if I
tried to get past him he would hit me.
 
You can see all that, you can feel all that and you can feel your own
smallness and feebleness.
 
And I
tried to get past him again, but he pushed me so hard that it hurt, and he got
his penis out.
 
“Suck it” he said, I
was crying, but that didn’t stop him.
 
“Shut up and suck it” he said and he forced it into my mouth.
 
I can feel it now, scraping past my
teeth.
 
And when I had done it, he
smiled, he put himself back in his trousers and he opened the door “get lost
then” he said and I ran from the room and the house.
 
Spitting, spitting, spitting, rub, rub,
rubbing my mouth.
 
“You know that’s
rape don’t you love?” said Frank
“I know it’s violation, I didn’t know it was rape, no”
“Oh for fuck’s sake Gussie, of course it’s rape, isn’t it disgusting
Frank?
 
That shouldn’t go unpunished
should it?” there is no stopping Jo, she is a dog barking at squirrels, but
Frank is a cat, silent and unseen.
 
“I’ve just seen him”
“have you?
 
Where?” I know what’s
coming
“Just passed him down by the bridge, he had his rod with him.
 
Excuse me my dears I have to go.”
“Where are you going?” I said but I knew
“I’m just going to have a word with him” Frank said as he got up off his chair,
and Jo and I clambering out of our seats to stop him, falling over our tired
legs “don’t Frank” Jo said, or I said.
 
“Don’t Frank, it happened years ago, It’s OK now.
 
It doesn’t matter now.”
 
But I knew it was inevitable, I knew
that whatever happened to Mark Davies, he would deserve it.
 
And as he left the house, Frank pushed
my hand gently off his arm and patted it as it fell “it always matters” and he
went to his car, Jo following him and me feeling strangely ashamed, not of what
happened but because of what Frank said, it does always matter.
 
When she came back Jo said “he’s going
to beat that bloke up”
“I know.”
“He got on the radio straight away to get someone to meet him at the
bridge.
 
Shall we go too?
 
Just to stop it?”
“No.
 
That’s your fault Jo, whatever
happens now is your fault.”
 
But I
knew it was mine.
 
“Well, he’s had
it coming a long time” said Jo.
“When I was in New York years ago I saw these posters everywhere, they were
horrible, it was a pile of dead cats and it said ‘what makes a serial killer?
Practice, practice, practice’”
“What did you say that for?”
“I don’t know.
 
Well, I do know,
because if he did that to me, he’s probably done much worse things to other
people”.

Edward texted me
this evening at long last, just an address and asking me to forward his things
there, no explanation, no love, no hate, no kisses but I could feel his
repulsion in every word, and it was funny because when I saw his name on the
text I was so happy that he was OK, then I read it and was so angry with him,
for not speaking to me and being so fucking uncommunicative and not giving me a
chance to explain myself, or to lie to him I suppose I mean and then I wished
that Charlie had killed him.
 
I sat
on the lavatory wondering what to write to him, and in the end just said I would
send the stuff and I did put kisses because I couldn’t do anything else really,
but they probably revolted him.