Come Not When I Am Dead (2 page)

Later on, when I am in the police
station, a policeman’s fleece jacket draped around my shoulders, people being
kind to me, I try to be aware again, I want it all to be in slow motion once
more.
 
Rooms devoid of pictures, but
posters pinned on the wall, I squint and try to read them, handbags, cars,
theft, crime, they are all just words.
 
Someone sits me down at a table, blue biro scrawl ‘piss off pigs’ it
says, I see that.
 
There is a
screeching noise and I am aware that someone has pulled a chair away from the
table, a hand on the back of it and then I feel a slight breeze as he moves
himself into the seat of the chair.
 
I look up,
 
I see a face,
dark haired, too dark haired, his mouth is upturned and that is a smile, I know
that is a smile.
 
I shut my eyes, I
open my eyes.
 
It is Frank.
 
And then I find myself crying.
 
“Hey, hey, hey” he says “come on Gussie,
what would Kaye have said?
 
What
would your grandma have said?
 
Come
on darling, don’t cry.
 
Come on” and
my head is in his shoulder, he is next to me, he is taller and I am smaller, it
is not his shoulder, it is where his gun recoil protector would be, what is
that part of your body?
 
I cannot
breath.
 
I am in the police station,
this is Frank, he is in charge here, he was grandma’s friend and I have known
him all my life.
 
I start thinking
again whether they were lovers or not.
 
They couldn’t have been.
 
But
he will look after me.
 
He really
will and the black creeps up from the floor, what is that?
 
And even though I am watching it creep
up and up and up I know it’s inside me.
 
The black creeping up my legs, my middle, it’s got to my head and as it
is half way up my eyes I cannot see any more and I wake up being carried to
another room and people shouting and arms all around me.
   
I wake up and I am vomiting.

“Do you know the dead man Gussie?”
“Yes.”

Late
Spring/Early Summer 2015

I dreamt about grandma again last
night, she took me out to lunch some place that was a favourite of hers, down a
path through some pretty gardens.
 
She was always lunching out. She had just been to see ‘Fiddler on the
roof’ at the theatre, she kept calling people ‘Israel’ as some people call others
‘bro’, which, even in the dream, I found incongruous, but then I was half rag
doll.

We were waiting for our food to
arrive, the pub was full of large dark wood beams and little quiet
corners.
 
The light was dimmed and
there was a velvet hush around us and we sat at a heavy oak, round table on
matching heavy oak hard back chairs like thrones.
 
I turned to look at her but she was
looking away at a dog or something on the floor, she did like dogs.
 
Her silken-soft and cherished face was
in profile.
 
I opened my mouth to
say something and then all was ruined, as I was very suddenly, violently sick,
but it didn’t look like sick, it looked like water gushing out of a fire
hydrant, all over the white linen table cloth. grandma turned to look at me in
slow motion, a look that cared for me and was never surprised or
horrified.
 
She always knew what to
do and like an unfurling ribbon she got up out of her chair and helped me up
out of mine and we glided out in to the sunshine, arm in arm, in a daze.

I wake up exhausted and forget that
she’s dead.
 
I listen out for
her.
 
My love for her is tender and
precious and caught in continuous timeless motion.
 
But she’s not here any more.
 
I listen for creaks coming from her
bedroom, but there are none.
 
I
listen for her padding footsteps on the landing on her way to the
bathroom.
  
She had a shower
every morning before I got up and I had a bath every night before she went to
bed, but there’s no sound of little velvet feet.
 
And then I lie back down again, neat and
straight, close my eyes and put my hands on my belly.
 
I miss her.
  
“I miss her,” I say to the
ceiling.
 
I try to sleep again but I
know I’m just stewing and so I clamber out of my self scented, self centered
bed.
 
It is only me here.

The rug by the right hand side of my
bed is creamy and hairy and comfortably raggedy, it is littered with cat treat
wrappers, they’re scratchy beneath my feet and this morning there’s a neat cat
pooh there too, quite dry, I pick it up with toilet paper and put it in a pot
to take downstairs.
 
Which one did
that I wonder?
 
I am considered
today, quiet and sad, the dream has upset me.
 
I am weary and tired and I need cheering
and loving, I need wrapping up in light and fluffy love.
 
I talk to myself calmly and softly.
 
I go into grandma’s room and sit on her
bed, look out of her wonderful white framed windows that take up a whole wall.
I look past the horses in the field, down to the sea, I spread out my hands by
my side and feel the mattress.
 
My
back is upright and my mouth goes straight, in a line and I say “Oh well” turn
my back to the windows and leave the room.
 
And then I call Charlie “If the universe is an inch wide” I say to him
“how much do you love me?”
“a mile” he says without hesitation, it is what I needed, sometimes he says just
the right thing, sometimes he doesn’t.
 
“Are you simpering Gussie?” he is pleased I think, but I know he has an
image of me in his head, small and cute and blonde with a naughty face, and
that’s what he likes, but it’s not me today, and I don’t want to be that person
today.
 
“I need love and devotion,
I’m missing grandma, give me love” I am embarrassed to ask, I feel vulnerable,
but if I don’t ask him I won’t get it.
  
I do believe too in being direct
and asking for something if you want it.
 
I don’t pussy foot around, I like that about myself.
 
I find a lot of people say what they
don’t mean, don’t say what they do mean, that’s not right.
 
I think, if you give yourself to someone
on a plate, it’s honest, right from the beginning and they can never say you
deceived them or played games with them.
 
I don’t want anyone to ever play games with me.
 
“I will devote myself to you later, but
now I must devote myself to my patients, they can’t cure themselves!
 
Remember you are much loved.
 
Goodbye”
 
It is too quick, it was too short.
 
And he put down the phone before he
heard me say “goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.”
 
It all sounded a bit trite and once again, I am disappointed “kiss,
kiss, kiss” I said to myself, wanting niceness but not feeling it.
 
And I am left with a huge expanse of
nothingness before me, I am left with no wind in my sails and a hole in the
centre of me.
 
I want to ring him
back and say “love me to devotion, be physical, be passionate, shake me with
emotions, shock me with the power of you” but I don’t.
 
And I imagined him putting down his
phone, not thinking about me again and with his beautiful, new-born face, in
his sterile white coat going in to his waiting room and saying “Tiddles Jones”
or something like that and walking away with a little dog following him.
 
Fluffy and white, tripping along and
asking to be loved, like I am.
 
Pat
me on the head, stroke my fur and love me.
Anyway, it was almost enough, half enough to stir me from my mood, only half
though.
My breath draws in, my mouth is shut.
 
I’m easily hurt and easily pleased.
 
I’m quick to take offence.
 
I’m easily appeased.
 
I make snap decisions.
 
I’m intolerant and I’m impatient.
 
I am honest.
 
I am dangerous.
 
I think I am dangerous.

I go downstairs happier and happier
with each stair because I am on my own and because this is my uninterfered-with
day, “I. Need. No. One” I say with each foot fall on each stair and then creak
my way along old floor boards to the downstairs kitchen.
 
I touch the walls as I go by, I touch the
doors as I go by.
 
I see no faults,
nothing that needs replacing in this house.
 
I unbolt the door, there are three
bolts, but only one works and suddenly life is in stereo once more, life is in
technicolour once more, life is bursting through the great big windows at me
and I sigh and stretch, my arms wide and my fingers straining to touch the
walls, and I look out at the ships in the bay.
 
I can breathe easily.
 

This is my house now, where once I
was a child living with my grandma but now it is all mine and I still see her
in the empty spaces, on her chair, by the stove in the kitchen, cutting flowers
in the hall, her big black-handled flower scissors in her little hands and an
oatmeal jumper on, always the same.
  
I miss her.
 
I don’t
understand why she had to go.
 
“But
why did she have to die?” I said to Frank
“We all have to die”
“But why?
 
I don’t understand.
 
I know that there is good in the world
and that even the bad things are often good in the end because you learn from
them and evolve, but not grandma dying.
 
I don’t see any good that’s come from her dying.
 
I just miss her, I miss her so much”
“But think of all those years you had with her Gussie, all that you learnt
then.
 
We all have to die” and
Charlie had said
“It’s another odd thing about you” because to him it’s just a fact of life,
people die, but I think that’s because he’s never really loved.
 
“Do you love me?
 
Really love me?” I say to the sky.
 
The gate squeals open and there are
steps coming down the path, and I stop still, standing stone and listen, jaunty
steps of soft shoes, and I know it’s the postman.
 
The sash window laboursomely opens with
much groaning noise and the outside seeps in “letters my darlin’ and a parcel,
anything interesting?
 
Tisn’t your
birthday is it?” he looks at his finger nails
 
“nice day” and now he leans on the open
window-sill and waits to see if it’s anything exciting in the package.
 
“It’s a new purse” I say “from ebay” and
neither of us seem very interested in that as I lay it down on the worktop
behind me.
 
“Still miss your gran”
he says to his knuckles, and I shrug and look like I might cry “She was a one
wasn’t she?
 
Always lively and up to
something” he shifts his bag on his shoulder, “well, got work to do, you look
after yourself maid” and he closes the window behind him, it closes too easily
and every time I think it will slam and break.
 
The noises of this house are never
changing and I need them to stay like that, they’re family noises the
soundtrack to my life.
 
“Fuck” I say
as I open the fridge, “f u ck” and take out the orange the milkman brought,
push my thumb in the centre of the foil top and the edges lift up
automatically, absent mindedly I throw it on the floor and take a few gulps of
juice.
 
I still haven’t decided what
to do today, but I must get a move on, I hate wasting my time, I feel
frustration growing.
 
The postman
will be feeling sorry for me, the milkman feels sorry for me, the log man feels
sorry for me, I feel sorry for me, but I won’t cry because I don’t cry and
because I don’t like other people crying.
 
They say that crying heals you, it’s part of the healing process, but I
can’t cry and I think that maybe I will get over this just as quickly or not as
someone who cries, but the difference is that they make themselves a pain by
their tears whereas I won’t let myself be vulnerable, and they think I am
resilient, maybe I am.

The juice is cold and sharp and
delicious once it’s all gone down, but it disturbs me slightly that I drank it
so swiftly, without the juice touching all the walls inside my body, without
tasting it as much as I could, but I don’t want any more.
 
I pick up 6 defrosted chicks from the
bowl on the side, go outside and rip off two legs for the Major, “aaa” he
cratches in thanks, his big black bead eyes turning slightly to brown in the
moment they look at me.
 
I give 4
chicks to the sparrowhawk pair, push them down the shoot in to their aviary and
hear them swoop and take them away and then I take 2 down to Sergeant in his
aviary at the bottom of the garden.
 
He’s fat and silly and I see he’s had some sport of his own with a
sparrow that must have flown in somehow, dust-coloured soft little
chest-feathers all over his eating log, that’s better than a chick “you
are
clever” I say and look proudly at
his little loved head.
 
Only a few more
months and we’ll be hunting again.
 
He’s dropped another primary feather and I pick it up and put it under
my bra strap for safe keeping.
  
I leave him and let the hens out.
 
One thing happens after another.
 
One step before the other.
 
I
am talking to myself, I always talk to myself, I ask myself question after
question.
 
“You were born asking
questions” grandma used to say “why?” I’d ask, and she’d laugh
“there you go, you’re at it again.”
 
The cock comes out first, big and blue and bold, feathers flying like a
flag and I talk to him, my back bent towards him, and just as easily as I am
gentle with him, I could pull his head off if he deserves it.
 
He runs out, he turns and he waits.
 
The hens all stand in the doorway,
nudging each other “you first, no you, no you” one jumps down and makes a run
for it, but she’s not quick enough, he’s got her, he’s on her back, and really
his love making is too rough and whilst he’s thrusting on top of her the others
take the chance to run out, scatter and hide.
 
I call them to me with mixed corn and
old cake.
  
I count and check
the tortoises in the pen and then go back inside.
 
It is 9am and I will have a cigar to get
me in the mood for my day.
 
Really I
know this is a bad thing, it will make me feel like luxuriating all day and
what I want is action.
 
Maybe I just
don’t feel like action.
 
Oh piss, I
just don’t feel right, I don’t feel motivated.
 
I am frustrated, that’s what I am.
 
I stop walking,
 
I lie on my back on the grass where I
am, my knees bent and my feet on the ground, my right hand holds the cigar and
my left hand is stretched out playing with blades of silky green.
 
“Life is lovely” I said to my nephew
Douglas when we were talking about someone we both know who says to his
children “life’s tough and it gets tougher”
“It’s not though really, is it?”
“yes, my life is lovely”
“what about grandma” he said and it cut me and I felt all the sap seeping from
my wound.
 
I stand up and put one
foot before the other purposefully, I am aware of everything.
 
“I am aware of everything” I say out
loud as I watch the grass succumb beneath my feet and watch the door handle
turn in my hand.
 
I will not take
anything for granted, and ten little sparrows follow me closely, flying near my
shoulders, up the garden.